Speaking in Indianapolis on Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency is proposing to abandon the Obama-era finding on the dangers of greenhouse gases.
The endangerment finding also underpins the nation’s climate regulations, particularly those governing the automobile sector. The EPA’s proposal would rescind climate regulations for cars and trucks, meaning automakers would no longer have to abide by any climate rules.
The decision goes farther than even the first Trump administration. Trump 1.0 left the endangerment finding in place but dramatically weakened Obama-era regulations on cars.
Zeldin described the move as “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.”
The 2009 endangerment finding proposed that emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases (GHG) threaten public health and welfare, and that vehicular emissions are a contributing factor.
The Trump administration is now proposing to find instead that “there is insufficient reliable information to retain the conclusion that GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines in the United States cause or contribute to endangerment to public health and welfare in the form of global climate change.”
The impacts of Tuesday’s proposal appear to be limited to its regulations on the auto industry and do not directly address the EPA’s regulations on other emitting sectors, including power plants. However, in June, the Trump administration separately proposed to find that power plants’ greenhouse gas emissions “do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated.
Read more at TheHill.com.
