This week, the EPA officially proposed revoking its endangerment finding: a 2009 declaration that affirmed greenhouse gas emissions harm human health. The finding underpins many of the agency’s most powerful regulations of planet-warming emissions, and if it’s repealed, it could take those rules with it.
In its Tuesday announcement, the EPA made the case that the agency overstepped its legal authority with the finding and doesn’t actually have the power to implement emissions rules. The EPA also offers an “alternative” justification for the reversal, in which it attempts to downplay the link between human-caused emissions and global warming.
The proposed rollback is a denial of consensus climate science and would have serious implications for the federal government’s ability to cut climate pollution if it stands. For starters, it would knock out the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from vehicles. The Biden administration’s strict tailpipe-emissions limits, meant to push the U.S. toward EVs, would collapse.
Reversing the endangerment finding would also make it even easier for the Trump administration EPA to gut power-plant emissions rules. That includes a Biden administration rule that would’ve required many coal and gas plants to capture their carbon emissions or shut down, and which the Trump administration was already looking to repeal. An EPA rule that regulates methane pollution from oil and gas facilities is also at risk.
The rule change probably won’t be published until 2026, after the EPA has reckoned with a likely barrage of public comments, former White House counsel Jody Freeman told Heatmap. After that, it’ll probably face a wave of legal challenges and may ultimately be considered by the Supreme Court. If the court’s conservative majority rules in the Trump administration’s favor, a future presidential administration may not be able to bring it back without Congress’ help.
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