The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones.
Three people granted anonymity to discuss the action said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has recommended to the White House that the agency overhaul the finding, which underpins all Clean Air Act climate regulations.
The action, which was first reported by The Washington Post, represents President Donald Trump’s most aggressive action to date to wipe out the federal effort to combat climate change, which he has repeatedly labeled a “hoax” despite soaring global temperatures and the vast body of scientific evidence that it is fueling disasters around the globe.
Trump has long sought to undermine the science of manmade warming that is at the heart of the endangerment finding.
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” he famously declared on Twitter in 2012.
It is unclear exactly how Trump’s EPA will seek to unwind the landmark finding, said three people familiar with the plans, who were granted anonymity to share details of not yet final decisions. They all expected it to reject the bedrock justification for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in some fashion to give agencies freer rein to dismantle climate rules.
Zeldin sent his recommendation to the White House last week, two of those people said. One person said it called for a formal rulemaking.
The recommendation is now part of a wider review that includes the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the other person. That person said the White House is still weighing how far it is willing to go to attack the foundational science underlying the endangerment finding, a step that would generate political and public backlash.
“They were trying to answer a very narrow question, which was: ‘Does it make policy sense?’” said the person, referencing conversations with administration officials. “The next round is more complicated, which is: ‘Do we want to spend time on it?’ … Pursuing a change, whether an overhaul or a modest amount of change, is going to cost political capital. It’s not going to be free.”
Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff during the first Trump administration, told POLITICO’S E&E News on Wednesday that a review was justified.
“I think fundamentally, since 2009 the understanding of climate science and the evolution has significantly evolved, and EPA policies and future decisions reflect the latest and greatest numbers,” said Gunasekara.
“Whatever policy decisions are ultimately made by the administrator and his team, they should reflect the science,” she added. “And I don’t think that any science should be off limits for reconsideration.”
Supporters of overturning the endangerment finding say they expect EPA to follow a regular rulemaking process, which would include publishing a draft finding in the Federal Register and taking public comment.
“I think it’s the procedure they have to take,” said Steve Milloy, who worked on Trump’s first transition and is on the board of the Heartland Institute, an anti-climate advocacy group. “[H]opefully that will be done as quickly as possible.”
The Obama EPA spent eleven months developing the endangerment finding, and Milloy said it might take the Trump team longer than that. The first step, he said, would be for EPA to assemble new scientific advisory boards to replace the ones it disbanded last month.
And then it will be litigated — perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court.
“Who knows, Massachusetts vs EPA may even come down,” he said, referring to the landmark Supreme Court decision that led greenhouse gases to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. “The possibilities are endless.”
Environmental groups quickly blasted the news Wednesday and indicated they will fight it in court.
“This decision ignores science and the law,” David Doniger, senior strategist and attorney for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “Abdicating EPA’s clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution only makes sense if you consider who would benefit: the oil, coal, and gas magnates who handed the president millions of dollars in campaign contributions.”
Doniger added: “We will see them in court.”
Vickie Patton, the Environmental Defense Fund’s general counsel, said any move to undo the finding “would be reckless, unlawful, and ignore EPA’s fundamental responsibility to protect Americans from destructive climate pollution. We will vigorously oppose it.”
If EPA ultimately undoes its Obama-era finding, the agency would lose a key part of its legal justification for regulating carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants from most sources, including cars, trucks and fossil fuel-burning power plants.
However, such an action would attract inevitable legal challenges from environmental groups and Democratic-led states. The overwhelming consensus among researchers is that the scientific evidence that greenhouse gases drive climate change and threaten human welfare has only grown stronger in the past decade and a half — and any attempt by EPA to reverse course may well be laughed out of court.
“They don’t have a winning hand. Having the power to do this doesn’t tell you anything about whether or not what they’re doing makes sense on the merits,” said Joseph Goffman, who ran EPA’s air office during the Biden administration. “They’ve got nothing on the merits.”
Yet Goffman acknowledged the Trump administration may not care about the legal prospects given its willingness to expand executive branch authorities. He said it could withdraw the endangerment finding and repeal sectoral greenhouse gas regulations via final direct rule all before any federal court issues a verdict on its endangerment finding policy.
“It will be a while for the courts to catch up to them. And it would take even more time for the damage to be repaired,” he said.
Zeldin made the decision with input from Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and others. It’s now the Office of Management and Budget’s turn to weigh in, as specified in an executive order that Trump issued on Inauguration Day.
The agency issued its 2009 declaration, known as the endangerment finding, two years after a landmark Supreme Court ruling called greenhouse gases “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. The finding was a necessary step for EPA to legally justify issuing climate regulations for cars and trucks. It later expanded the finding to cover additional sources, including power plants and airplanes.
The finding has survived previous legal attacks.
In a 2012 decision that rejected a challenge by states and industry groups, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said the EPA finding is consistent with Supreme Court precedent, as well as “the text and structure of the Clean Air Act, and is adequately supported by the administrative record.” It also found that the agency had amassed “substantial” evidence to bolster its conclusion that greenhouse gases are driving climate change and endangering the public.
The court also rejected arguments that “too much uncertainty” exists about climate change to support the finding.
Subsequent attempts to overturn the endangerment finding similarly fell flat.
During Trump’s first term, EPA rejected several petitions seeking to undo the endangerment finding, as did the Biden administration. And a lawsuit in 2023 trying to overturn it was tossed out after the D.C. Circuit found that the plaintiffs did not show that the finding harmed them. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
Despite his recommendation to revisit the endangerment finding, Zeldin himself has a moderate history on this issue.
As a member of Congress in 2019, Zeldin was one of just 22 Republicans to vote against an amendment that would have blocked EPA from implementing the finding. During his confirmation hearing in January, Zeldin acknowledged the existence of climate change and the basic underlying science.
But when Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the Environment and Public Works Committee’s ranking member, asked Zeldin in written questions if he would implement and enforce the finding, Zeldin replied that he “will learn from EPA career staff about the current state of the science on greenhouse gas emissions and follow all legal requirements.”
Since taking the helm of EPA, Zeldin has vocally criticized climate spending laws passed under former President Joe Biden and attempted to halt the flow of money targeted at reducing greenhouse gas pollution. On Tuesday, that effort culminated in the dramatic resignation of a veteran Justice Department official who resisted pressure to order Citibank to freeze $20 billion in money to fund greenhouse gas reduction projects.
Without the endangerment finding, EPA’s ability to regulate climate pollutants would be significantly diminished. But some rules would be likely to survive based on other authorities under the Clean Air Act or other laws.
One major example is a methane rule aimed at limiting greenhouse gas pollution by the oil and gas sector. After a Democratic Congress in 2021 used the Congressional Review Act to revive methane limits that EPA had undone during Trump’s first term, most oil and gas producers have accepted that some regulation for the pollutant must exist. However, they are seeking significant changes to the methane rule, part of the Biden administration’s plan to reduce human-caused methane emissions by around 80 percent.
EPA is also explicitly required under a separate 2020 law signed by Trump himself to aggressively ramp down the use of hydrofluorocarbons, a family of refrigerants and aerosols that are potent greenhouse gases.
