Trump’s EPA attacks its own power to fight climate change

In 2009, the environmental protection agency said that the increase in concentrations of greenhouse In the atmosphere, threatened public health and well-being. This “conclusion of endangerment”, as we know in legal jargon, may have seemed obvious to those who have been following climate science for decades, but its consequences for American policy have been great: it has enabled EPA to issue rules limiting the emissions of American vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources. Although these rules have not always survived judicial disputes and changing the presidential administrations, the regulatory authority which underlies them has proven to be remarkably stable.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump’s EPA took a major step towards the change of this. At a truck dealer in Indianapolis, the administrator of EPA, Lee Zeldin, announced an official proposal to repeal the conclusion of endangerment, which has been underway since the start of Trump’s second presidency. At the same time, Zeldin has announced a plan to repeal all federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions for motor vehicles. “So finalized, today’s announcement would be equivalent to the greatest deregulative action in the history of the United States,” he said at the press conference.

Zeldin accused his predecessors to EPA of making “a lot, many, many mental jumps” in the 2009 declaration, and he argued that the “real threatening” for the livelihoods of people is not a carbon dioxide, but rather the regulations themselves, which, according to him, has led to higher prices and to restrict the choices of people.

If EPA succeeds in reversing the endangering conclusion, it “would eviscerate the largest regulatory tool in the federal government” to keep climate change in failure, said Ann Carlson, professor of environmental law at the University of California in Los Angeles.

The Republicans of Congress have already repealed a large part of the historic climate law of former President Joe Biden, who aimed to put the United States within the reach of his objectives of the Paris Agreement mainly by channeling money to renewable energy sources. Cancel endangered research targets the other main tool that the US government can use to combat climate change: the executive power to limit emissions through regulatory action. In other words, the Republicans have already eliminated many of the proverbial climatic carrots of the federal government – now they go after the sticks.

“We will not have a serious national policy if it happens,” said Patrick Parenteau, professor emeritus of climate policy and environmental law at the Faculty of Law of Vermont.

But it is a great “if”. Experts say that the EPA plan will necessarily be involved in years of prosecution, perhaps one day heading to the Supreme Court, which blessed the authority of EPA to regulate greenhouse gases in 2007 and refused to hear a challenge to the conclusion of the endangerment as recently as December 2023. And even if the EPA manages to reverse the end of the end of the end of the courtyard. The allies of the petroleum industry may not like. Indeed, the risk is serious enough for certain groups in the fossil fuels industry to urged the Trump administration not To repeal the observation.

The fight on the endanger conclusion stems from different interpretations of the Clean Act Act. When the Congress widened the law in 1970, it instructed the EPA to regulate air pollutants that threaten public health, but it kept the definition of wide “polluting”. “They had the foresight to understand that they could not predict all the potential air pollutants that would endanger public health and well-being in the many decades to come,” said Zeanan Hoover, who was a main councilor of EPA under Biden. This gave the EPA a certain latitude to determine exactly what it should regulate – a question that the presidents addressed very differently, the Democrats generally trying to extend the power of the agency and the republicans trying to limit it. With its endangering conclusion of 2009, the Obama administration added carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases to the list.

Now that Zeldin has announced a plan to eliminate the conclusion, the EPA will open a period of 45 days so that the public can weigh on the proposal. The agency is supposed to take these comments into account before moving to finalize the rule. At this stage, the Environmental States and Groups can continue EPA in what should be a one -year legal battle.

“The lawyer who will continue will make many rich people,” said Parenteau. In the meantime, Zeldin would likely work to cancel the existing regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, unless the courts are convinced to suspend the implementation of the new rule.

Any trial would probably end up at the DC Court of Appeals circuit, which hears cases concerning the development of federal policies. Law experts claim that the EPA argument may not behave well with these judges, because the circuit has confirmed the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the clean Air Act in the past. In addition to this, when the Congress adopted the law on the reduction of inflation in 2022, the Democrats modified the Clean Act Act to explicitly declare carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases as air pollutants, strengthening the basics of their regulation. The Republicans have not repealed this language when they have emptied a large part of the rest of the Biden era law, and adversaries are likely to invoke these modifications to the courts, said Carlson.

But it would not necessarily be the end of this, because such a matter could go as far as the Supreme Court. The conservative majority of the Court could then choose to undermine the Massachusetts c. EPA, the 2007 decision which gave the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and led to the conclusion of the endangerment. “This is perhaps the ultimate goal here,” said Carlson, “to bring the Supreme Court to review the Massachusetts C. EPA so that it is essentially impossible to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.”

Canceling the observation would not only be dismantled the basis of American climate regulations – it could also weaken the best legal defense of oil companies in the flow of climate proceedings against them by cities and states. For years, the oil companies have relied on a different Supreme Court decision to assert that federal law protects them from state prosecution on climate change. In the 2011 decision American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court concluded that, because the EPA already regulated greenhouse gases under the Clean Act, states could not separate polluters under the federal law on “nuisance” – a type of legal demand used when someone’s actions interfere with public rights, such as the right to healthy environment.

The reasoning of the court was that the congress had delegated the task of regulating the emissions at EPA, leaving no room for the federal courts to embark on climate policy. But if the conclusion of endangerment is revoked and the EPA no longer regulates these emissions, this argument could collapse, leaving societies of fossil fossil vulnerable in the courts across the country.

“It is very worrying that the inversion of the observation opens the door to many more harmful proceedings against all types of energy companies,” said Jeff Holmstead, partner of the Bracewell energy law firm, in E & e News earlier this year. The petroleum industry can then continue a safeguard plan: companies could ask the congress, which is currently controlled by a close republican majority, to grant them legal protection against climate proceedings, according to Parenteau.

Meeting of the conclusion of endangerment could leave the companies of fossil fuel navigating in a patchwork of states laws instead of a single federal cohesive policy. If greenhouse gas emissions are no longer regulated under the Clean Act, states would probably be free to do their own rules, added Carlson. Among other consequences, this could strengthen the case of California against the Trump administration on its right to place more strict than federal standards on vehicle emissions. “There is potential for many chaos,” she said.

It is possible that a more liberal presidential administration can one day restore the conclusion of endangering, even if Zeldin manages to revoke it. But it would take a while before which could result in any significant action on climate change, according to Hoover.

“Unfortunately, for all those who want to see the government solving a big problem, there is very little to achieve thanks to regulations in four years,” he said.