EPA Strikes Down Obama’s Endangerment Finding: CO₂ Cleared of ‘Toxic’ Label
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will “formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding” at a White House ceremony.
In 2007, the Supreme Court’s climate change ruling, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, permitted the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1992.
Following the Court’s directive and after extensive manipulation of the scientific process and the spread of disinformation by the mainstream media, Obama’s EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson issued the “Endangerment Finding” in 2009.
The agency decided that six key greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide, methane, and others) endanger both public health and welfare, laying the groundwork for hyper-regulation that restricted both prosperity and personal liberty. Subsequent rules promulgated by the EPA allowed the agency to essentially wage a “War on Fossil Fuels,” a “War on Appliances,” and a “War on Meat.” Biden’s ludicrous “Inflation Reduction Act” further fueled this inanity by codifying the “Green New Deal.”
Back in July, I noted that the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin had planned to rescind these rules. The EPA will officially revoke the rules this week.
“On Thursday, President Trump will be joined by Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday, referring to the EPA’s leader. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
…The revocation of the endangerment finding will represent the Trump administration’s biggest broadside yet against efforts to combat climate change and would be a boon for the fossil fuel industry that has fought against climate regulations for years. The endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases pose a risk to public health and welfare, giving EPA the authority to regulate them.
The agency will immediately end the treatment of the life-sustaining gas known as carbon dioxide, as if it were a toxic gas. This will give many of our industries a respite from the burdens imposed on them based on the pseudoscience of global warming.
President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will “formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding” at a White House ceremony, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.
The action “will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” she said. The bulk of the savings will stem from reduced costs for new vehicles, with the EPA projecting average per vehicle savings of more than $2,400 for popular light-duty cars, SUVs and trucks, Leavitt said.
However, as Ed Morrissey of Hot Air notes, there is likely to be more lawfare and a stop at the U.S. Supreme Court before we see the end of this insanity.
Repealing the endangerment finding won’t be enough. The White House has to get into court to allow the Supreme Court to rethink Massachusetts v EPA, only without any technical distractions such as the APA. Otherwise, the EPA will remain stuck treating CO2 and other natural atmospheric gases as pollutants (as opposed to actual pollutants such as particulates), and nothing will change in the meantime. As I wrote at the time, Justice Antonin Scalia certainly gave plenty of reason for reconsideration of this kind of regulation-by-lawsuit that bypasses Congress..
The trip to the courts is likely to be quick. Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy the climate hysteria being offered by climate crisis hucksters.
Some climate damage could be irreversible if the planet heats up enough to cross “tipping points,” such as significant melting of ice sheets that can’t be reformed.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticized the administration’s planned move as a “corrupt giveaway to Big Oil.”
“Who will pay the price for Donald Trump’s corruption? Quite literally every single community in this country,” Schumer said in a speech on the Senate floor.
However, most Americans will enjoy more affordable cars and reliable, reasonably priced energy.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) is also looking at rolling back Biden-era Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards, reducing the required fleetwide average from 50.4 miles per gallon (as Biden mandated) to 34.5 mpg by 2031. As the Institute for Energy Research outlines, this change could “reduce average vehicle costs by $930 and save Americans $109 billion over five years by making vehicles more affordable.”
And so, after years on trial in the court of climate politics, carbon dioxide has finally been acquitted. The jury of common sense has spoken: the gas that makes plants grow, bubbles in our sodas, and keeps the planet alive is not a criminal but a crucial component of life itself. With the gavel dropped and the Endangerment Finding struck down, CO₂ walks free—exonerated, rehabilitated, and ready to breathe new life into American industry. Case closed.
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Comments
If Chuck U Schumer is fulminating on the Senate floor it’s a win for the nation.
maybe we’ll all be lucky and he’ll fulminate like mercury fulminate
Good. It’s long overdue but if it is to survive SCOTUS it had to be done right. Now SCOTUS needs to overturn the Massachusetts case, because until then the EPA must pretend CO2 is a pollutant even after it’s already found that it’s not.
This is probably gonna be pretty straightforward once it hits SCOTUS. Roberts wrote perhaps his most blunt dissent in Massachusetts v EPA disagreeing about standing of the Plaintiffs and the hypothetical nature of any ‘injury’, the lack of exploration whether other factors could explain shoreline loss and whether US reg would make any difference given China/India growing emissions. Taken together with the rightward lean in the current composition of SCOTUS since ’07 and the West Virginia v EPA opinion a couple years ago… IMO SCOTUS will take up the case and use it to overturn Mass v EPA.
Could someone explain why it’s necessary to overturn Massachusetts v EPA in order to reverse the EPA’s CO2 rules, as Ed Morrissey claims?
There are two separate issues here:
Did the EPA have the authority to make the regulatory changes?
Does a subsequent administration have the authority to roll back regulations established by a previous administration?
The first question need not (necessarily) be addressed in order to assert the authority mentioned in the second question.
Strategically, it may be wise to challenge the decision first in order to nullify the rules judicially and to establish a roadblock to similar future regulations. Tactically, this seems to not be strictly necessary in order to repeal the rules.
Over simplified answer is that the majority opinion in Mass v EPA effectively demands that EPA abandon ‘discretion’ to regulate and more/less compels the EPA to act unless the EPA can demonstrate green house gases ain’t harmful. Again that’s the practical effect of a very convoluted majority opinion. Even the usually conflict averse Roberts wrote a forceful dissent trashing the basis and the reasoning of the majority opinion which should indicate just how big pile of crap the majority wrote.
Wouldn’t the adoption of another study (not necessarily a new one, there is certainly much science backing the view that CO2 isn’t “toxic”), reaching a different conclusion, be sufficient to cause the withdrawal of the CO2 regulations? If the EPA has no “discretion” it would similarly be forced to withdraw the rules when another administration officially adopts a different scientific conclusion. What this reduces to is a disagreement about “science,” subject matter that I believe is beyond the jurisdiction of any court. Which particular scientific opinion is determinative of policy is a political question, likewise beyond the authority of the courts.
In any event, overturning Mass v EPA would be a better, longer-term (but not necessarily permanent) solution. I just don’t see the necessity for it.
As I understand it the EPA went into that case arguing that (1) CO2 is not a pollutant within the meaning of the Clean Air Act; (2) even if it were a pollutant, the EPA has the discretion whether to regulate it or not. The majority decision rejected both arguments and simply asserted as a fact that CO2 is a pollutant, and therefore the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to regulate it. No discretion.
It was nonsense at the time and it’s still nonsense, but until it’s overturned it’s still binding.
Not exactly. The EPA argued that it didn’t have the statutory authority to regulated CO2 as a pollutant. SCOTUS ruled it did so they went after it. It was a bad decision.
Diver64, not only did the court rule the EPA had the statutory authority, but also that it had the statutory duty to do so. That’s the problem.
Because the AOC EPA will just autopen it back into force.
This will be legally challenged for years. This is a high-risk high-reward legal maneuver. A lot of legal minds, even those who oppose the rule and think Massachusetts was wrongly decided think the admin is tilting at a legal windmills. But if they win, there is a lot of upside.
Keep in mind: the environmentalists dont have to win, only delay until the next admin. The permanent solution is for Congress to step in and overule Massachusetts. But GOP is feckless despite having all the reigns so they wont.
“Keep in mind: the environmentalists dont have to win, only delay until the next admin.”
Only if the donks win.
And they will at the GOPs current speed and direction.
Why so high? Reduce the CAFE requirement to 0 MPG and toss the whole regulatory section. Let the buys decide how much fuel economy matters to them.
the regulators are the same 5th graders who decided during COVID that the safest distance between people was 6′; they’re backed up by the same people who decided that masks, which easily pass viruses the diameter of the COVID virus during respiration, were required in all situations
Not to mention that CO2 is also just a trace gas in our atmosphere, coming in at just 0.04%.
which is necessary for life
7:30 AM: CO2 is life-threatening
8:30 AM: CO2 is life-sustaining
Oh oh. Settled Science changes again!
Quick, keep following it… before it gets away!
Breath in…. breath out…. wax on…. whacks off
Let us be glad that the EPA didn’t try to regulate dihydrogen monoxide, which is fatal if breathed in its liquid form.
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And a major cause of flooding.
Its persistance in the ground can linger for millenia.
Very true. Until a few years ago, the city of Olympia, WA drew its dihydrogen monoxide from an aquifer that was charged by melting glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age.
Let no one believe this was ever about “the environment “, it like everything else the left pushes is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. Leftist tools serve as useful idiots to support this nonsense.
Tree clearing gets a leg up. Who needs ’em they say.
Good riddance to bad rubbish law. The EPA “finding” was always a scam designed to extract money from the public.
OTOH, the proliferation of plant-life-sustaining CO2 is changing things. Here on the western fringes of Oregon, there is more biomass than ever known before and the rate of growth appears to be accelerating. As one would expect with more plant food and plenty of rain. One can reasonably conclude there is an endangerment: this overwhelming mass of wood will burn, and there will be no way to stop it. What happens if 100,000 square miles of forest burns in a month?
Current building codes, fire codes, municipal fire protection, woodland fire protection, road networks and general infrastructure were not designed, built or executed with dramatically increased fire danger in mind.
“What happens if 100,000 square miles of forest burns in a month?”
Germany survives one more winter!
dont forget
the epa and depart of trans and ..of ed etc etc
are now all based on equity so the scotus has that ,,like the fed,, as its mandate
kentaji for chief justice
and will they still use the word “chief”?
or change it to queen justice?
The back story on the Obama administrations CO2 finding reveals many details. It was planned and ignored not only science but process. A long but worthwhile read displays the tortuous road attorneys use to manipulate the legal system to their ends. It’s all about process and not end product.
https://govoversight.org/the-evidence-is-in-endangerment-finding-was-pre-cooked/
“Correspondence shows the decision makers calling “endangerment” a “decision ready to go,” a “basic fact” and “nothing more than science and common sense.”
Common sense! The same “scientific criterion” used for new gun laws that never work and are never reviewed and repealed on the basis of their effectiveness.
Whyever did we ever stop running science on the basis of “common sense?” I miss heavy objects falling faster than light ones, and the sun that orbited the earth… the nice, safe, flat earth, from back when I was young!
PS: See here for Jonathan Adler’s pessimistic view about the chance of this succeeding.
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