US Moves to Kill Ability to Regulate Greenhouse Gases

 

The Trump administration proposed on July 29 to revoke the 2009 finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that greenhouse gases endanger public health, a move that would gut the government’s ability to regulate fossil fuels and reject decades of scientific evidence.

A cornerstone of US climate policy, the declaration known as the “endangerment finding” has provided a legal basis for the agency to limit climate-warming pollutants under the Clean Air Act by regulating emissions from power plants, oil and gas wells, and other significant polluters.

The action would undermine the agency’s ability to curtail carbon dioxide, methane, and other emissions from these sources.

The fossil fuel and petrochemical industry has for years devastated the health, lives, and environment of US residents. In 2024, Human Rights Watch documented that communities living on the front lines of about 200 petrochemical and fossil fuel operations in Louisiana face elevated risks of cancer, respiratory ailments, and reproductive and newborn health harm.

Repealing the finding would threaten more communities across the country.

The EPA’s move comes mere days after a unanimous opinion by the International Court of Justice that climate change is “an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life.”

The court ruled that a country’s failure to act on fossil fuel emissions may violate international law.

The landmark ruling recognized the far-reaching consequences of greenhouses gases on human health that are already clear on the ground.

The proposal is one of the most significant assaults on human rights yet under Trump’s EPA, led by Lee Zeldin.

In March, the agency decided to close its environmental justice offices and programming, which had invested significantly in addressing the environmental harm disproportionately concentrated within Black, poor, and minority communities.

The EPA should heed the scientific consensus on the threat of greenhouse gases to human health and rescind its proposal, which is an abdication of its role in tackling the climate emergency.

Its denial of reality does nothing to change the very real, and immensely destructive, public health harms already felt by communities across the country.