WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Thursday repealed a key Obama-era scientific ruling that underpins all federal actions on curbing planet-warming gases.It is the most sweeping climate change policy rollback by the administration to date, after a string of regulatory cuts and other moves intended to unfetter fossil fuel development and stymie the rollout of clean energy.The so-called 2009 “endangerment finding” concluded that a range of greenhouse gases were a threat to public health. It’s become the legal bedrock of federal efforts to rein in emissions, especially in vehicles.Trump announced the move along with Environmental Protection AgencyAdministrator Lee Zeldin and White House budget director Russ Vought, who has long sought to revoke the finding and was a key architect of conservative policy blueprint Project 2025.”Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said, saying it was the biggest deregulatory action in US history.Trump has said he believes climate change is a “con job”, and has withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement, leaving the world’s largest historic contributor to global warming out of international efforts to combat it.The EPA said in a press release the endangerment finding had relied on an incorrect interpretation of federal clean air laws meant to protect Americans from pollutants that do harm through local or regional exposure, not through warming the global climate.”This flawed legal theory took the agency outside the scope of its statutory authority in multiple respects,” it said.Environmental groups say the move is by far the most significant rollback on climate change yet attempted and are set to challenge it in the courts.Former President Barack Obama, who infrequently comments on the policies of sitting presidents, said that repealing the finding would make Americans more vulnerable.”Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money,” he wrote on X.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first took a stance on the impacts of greenhouse gases in 2009, in the first year of Obama’s first term.The agency decided that six key planet-warming greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, were a danger to human health.With a divided Congress unable to agree on legislation to tackle rising global temperatures, the EPA finding became central to federal efforts to rein in emissions in the years that followed.”The endangerment finding has really served as the lynchpin of US regulation of greenhouse gases,” said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Department of Justice attorney.”So that includes motor vehicles, but it also includes power plants, the oil and gas sector, methane from landfills, even aircraft. So it really runs the gamut, all of the standards for each of the sectors is premised on this one thing.”Trump administration officials are stressing that overturning the regulation will save more than $1tn and will help cut the price of energy and transport.Reversing the finding would reduce automobile manufacturers’ spending by $2,400 per vehicle, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.Many environmentalists are sceptical of the potential cost savings being touted by the Trump team.”It’s going to force Americans to spend more money, around $1.4tn in additional fuel costs to power these less efficient and higher polluting vehicles,” said Peter Zalzal from the Environmental Defense Fund.”We’ve also analysed the health impacts and found that the action would result in up to 58,000 additional premature deaths, 37 million more asthma attacks,” he said.For some in the US car industry there will be uncertainty about the rollback as manufacturing less fuel-efficient vehicles might limit their sales overseas.”This rollback is sort of cementing things that have already been done, such as the relaxation of the fuel economy standards,” said Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert from Columbia University.”But it really does put the US automakers in a bind, because nobody else is going to want to buy American cars.”While the reversal will help the White House to roll back climate change regulations, there are likely to be unintended consequences, according to some observers.While working on overturning the finding, the Trump administration also utilized the 2009 ruling to prevent states from passing laws that would be stricter on carbon emissions.The fact that the finding gave responsibility for regulating warming gases to a federal authority was also used to suppress what are termed “nuisance” lawsuits, brought by individuals or organizations on the climate question.”The endangerment finding decision has blocked any number of lawsuits, and has been pretty powerful in keeping plaintiffs’ claims out of court ,” said Meghan Greenfield, now with Washington law firm of Jenner & Block.”I would expect states and non-profit groups to bring suits, probably primarily in our state courts, to try to figure out where the contours of this new law are.”The Department of Energy formed a panel of scientists to write a report last year challenging widely accepted science on the warming impact of greenhouse gases.That report underpinned the initial proposal to reverse the 2009 finding.But many climate experts complained that the panel behind the report was unrepresentative and filled with people who were skeptical of the human influence on warming, and that it was inaccurate and misleading. — Agencies
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