The Trump administration took one of its boldest steps yet against climate regulations on Thursday, officially wiping out the 2009 endangerment finding that declared carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases a danger to public health and welfare. PresidentDonald Trumpannounced the move at the White House alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, calling it the completion of a formal process to end what he described as the so-called endangerment finding.
Under the 2009 decision, put in place during the Obama administration, the Environmental Protection Agency determined that six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, threatened human health and the environment. That legal conclusion became the backbone for a wide range of Clean Air Act rules limiting emissions from cars, trucks, power plants, and oil and gas operations.
The action follows a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that classified greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and required the EPA to decide whether they endangered public health. Thursday’s decision reverses that determination entirely. White House called the repeal the single largest deregulation effort in U.S. history, aimed at removing barriers to fossil fuel production and rolling back Biden-era policies that promoted electric vehicles, renewable energy, and the transition away from oil and gas.
Trump has already withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement again and eliminated major tax credits that supported solar panels, wind farms, and electric cars.
The group warned that scrapping the endangerment finding doesn’t just weaken protections, it opens the door to new legal headaches for industry. They pointed to a 2011 Supreme Court decision that unanimously blocked companies from being sued under federal common law for greenhouse gas emissions, precisely because Congress had given the EPA authority to regulate them. Without that regulatory foundation, the Sierra Club argued, private lawsuits could surge.
Environmental advocates say the change will make it far harder, if not impossible, for future administrations to reinstate similar standards without new legislation or a different legal pathway. Supporters of the rollback, meanwhile, argue it frees American energy producers from what they call unnecessary restrictions and helps keep fuel prices down.
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