EPA Overturns Key Greenhouse Gas Regulation
▼ Summary
– The EPA has revoked the Obama-era “endangerment finding,” a scientific analysis that was the legal foundation for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and industry.
– This analysis was originally mandated by a 2007 Supreme Court decision but has seen limited practical impact due to legal and political challenges.
– The first Trump administration left the finding in place, opting for weak regulations rather than challenging the strong scientific evidence for human-caused climate change.
– The current administration is directly challenging the science, using a report from contrarian scientists that has faced significant scientific and legal criticism.
– The EPA’s justification claims the previous approach used “legal fictions,” a claim contradicted by the Supreme Court’s original order to conduct the analysis.
In a significant shift for environmental policy, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has officially revoked a foundational scientific analysis that previously enabled the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from major sources like vehicles, power stations, and factories. This decision effectively removes a critical legal underpinning for federal climate action, marking a stark departure from the regulatory approach established over the past decade. The targeted analysis, known formally as the endangerment finding, originated from a 2007 Supreme Court mandate and was finalized under President Obama, providing the essential scientific and legal basis for all subsequent federal carbon dioxide rules.
While the endangerment finding has existed in theory since 2009, its practical influence has been inconsistent. Shifting political winds between presidential administrations and persistent legal challenges have often stalled or weakened regulations derived from it. Notably, during the first term of the Trump presidency, officials chose not to formally challenge the finding itself. At that time, they assessed that the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change was too robust to dispute successfully. Instead, they opted to craft minimal regulations that complied with the finding in name only, a strategy aimed at achieving policy goals without a direct confrontation over the science.
This latest action represents a more aggressive legal and tactical maneuver. The current administration has assembled a panel of researchers skeptical of mainstream climate science to compile a report challenging the evidence within the original endangerment finding. That effort, however, faced substantial criticism from the scientific community and encountered legal hurdles. The EPA’s new rule sidesteps a detailed scientific rebuttal, focusing instead on perceived legal deficiencies. Agency statements argue this move “dismantles the tactics and legal fictions” employed by previous administrations to advance climate agendas. This characterization is notably contentious, as the so-called legal fictions include the Supreme Court’s own directive that compelled the EPA to create the endangerment analysis in the first place.
(Source: Ars Technica)
