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From Vox
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is initiating the process of undoing 31 environmental regulations, including the foundational 2009 endangerment finding that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.
- The Trump administration aims to roll back climate-related regulations by challenging the science behind climate change impacts from burning fossil fuels.
- Undoing the endangerment finding would require establishing a factual record contradicting climate change’s harmful effects, which may face legal challenges from states like California and environmental groups.
- Recent Supreme Court decisions limiting agency discretion could complicate EPA efforts to repeal climate regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that it’s starting the process of undoing 31 environmental regulations, including a ruling that’s foundational to US climate policy. But undoing any regulation is a cumbersome process, and with the climate rule in particular, the EPA may end up painting itself into a corner.
The big target here is the 2009 endangerment finding, in which the EPA concluded that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, therefore the agency must limit them. The finding is the foundation for regulations that ensued, like requiring power plants and vehicles to cut their emissions of gases that are heating up the planet. Without the endangerment finding, these regulations could be rescinded.
The rollbacks are yet another manifestation of the Trump administration’s longstanding antipathy toward all things related to climate change. “By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
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