Trump administration is set to roll back an Obama-era regulation which serves as basis for combating greenhouse gas emissions in the US
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The Trump administration is set to revoke its own authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other pollutants heating the planet, White House press has told reporters.
On Thursday, ‘President Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalise the recession of the 2009 Obama-era endangerment finding,’ Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference on Tuesday. ‘This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history.’
Leavitt also added that the rollback would save Americans $1.3trillion, but did not explain how officials arrived at that figure. Although the new rule may save some businesses money, it could lead to trillions in climate damages and healthcare costs, according to experts.
Such a decision follows numerous steps President Trump has taken to roll back environmental regulations targeting climate change, which he has previously mocked as a ‘hoax’ and ‘con job’.
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The Obama-era finding determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, and established a legal basis to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. It forms the legal underpinning of almost all federal climate regulations, including those on vehicles, oil and gas operations and power plants.
Now, the nation’s environmental regulator is expected to assert that EPA’s 2009 assessment was ‘overblown’, an opinion that contradicts the vast majority of scientists.
Crucially, the repeal could present difficulties for future Democratic presidents to use the EPA to transition the nation’s fleets of cars and power plants to clean energy.
‘I think it’s a historic low, frankly, for EPA to be taking this stance now,’ said former EPA official Benjamin DeAngelo. ‘We obviously had a very solid scientific basis in 2009. And I think that the scientific basis has stood the test of time quite well, and generally the science has only gotten stronger since then.’
The rollback is set to be met with legal challenges from numerous bodies, who argue that the decision can’t be reconciled with EPA’s requirements under the law or science. The Environmental Defence Fund has promised to sue the EPA over the rule, while the green legal organisation Earthjustice said the group ‘will see the Trump administration in court’.
The decision will bury ‘decades of research’ and remove the agency’s ability to protect the nation from dangerous pollution, according to Climate Power, an advocacy group focused on holding fossil fuel interests accountable for the role they play in environmental policy.
‘This decision will cost billions of dollars each year in addition to putting Americans’ health at risk,’ said Alex Witt, Climate Power’s senior adviser. ‘This decision makes it abundantly clear that Trump is willing to make our families sicker and less safe, all to benefit a few billionaire polluters.’
