The Trump administration eliminated a 2009 finding that six greenhouse gases are a danger to public health.
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Feb. 12 announced the elimination of a 2009 finding that served as the basis of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emissions standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond,” Trump said during an event at the White House.
“These crippling restrictions were a major factor in driving up car prices to unprecedented levels, and the car that you were getting was not nearly as good.”
Leaders rescinded the agency’s “endangerment finding” from 2009, established under the Obama administration, which declared that six gases—carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—pose a danger to public health.
The EPA’s 2009 ruling concluded that the gases endangered current and future public health and contributed to climate change. Subsequent regulations based on the finding include vehicle emissions standards, the Clean Power Plan, and other limits on methane, oil, and gas.
“This determination had no basis in fact, none whatsoever, and it had no basis in law,” Trump said, emphasizing the role fossil fuels play in energy production worldwide.
“Yet this radical rule became the legal foundation for the green new scam … which the Obama and Biden administrations used to destroy countless jobs.”
Officials adopted the regulation following a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that greenhouse gases constitute air pollution and directed the EPA to assess their potential effects on public health.
Trump called it “a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices.”
Vehicle costs increased by approximately 22 percent under the Biden administration “without achieving any meaningful impact on the environment but making the car worse,” Trump said.
Administration officials labeled the policy decision as historic.
“This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing on Feb. 10.
Savings are expected to come from lower automobile costs, she said, with reductions averaging about $2,400 per vehicle.
