The Trump administration on Thursday rolled back federal regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions, repealing a landmark 2009 finding on global warming and sparking outrage and legal threats.
“Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump announced at the White House with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who hailed the reversal as the “single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
“Referred to by some as the Holy Grail of the ‘climate change religion,’ the endangerment finding is now eliminated,” Zeldin declared. “The Trump EPA is strictly following the letter of the law, returning common sense to policy, delivering consumer choice to Americans and advancing the American dream.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that because of the administration’s repeal of greenhouse gas regulations, “Every single community in America will pay the price.”
“Every single community in America will pay the price. It will hurt kids with asthma. It will hurt homeowners and destabilize insurance markets as extreme weather gets worse, and it will send shockwaves across the economy,” the New York Democrat said.
Trump, who has called climate change “a hoax” and withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, said Thursday when asked about the scientific evidence of the harms of global warming: “This was all a scam, a giant scam.”
The “endangerment finding” from former President Barack Obama’s first year in office defined several gases in the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane, as substances that “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The conclusion became the basis for standards set for automotive and fossil fuel companies.
Obama denounced his successor’s action, saying, “We’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, also condemned the administration’s repeal, saying on X, “This shameful abdication — an economic, moral, and political failure — will harm Americans’ health, homes, and economic well-being.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has found herself a frequent target of Trump’s retaliatory wrath, bemoaned the administration’s decision to undue what she called the “scientific backbone of our nation’s fight against climate change.”
“Communities are already facing threats from storms, wildfires, and floods,” James said. “This decision puts them more at risk.”
Democrats and environmental groups said Thursday’s repeal means pollution will get worse, prices for consumers will rise even higher and health care will suffer.
“The evidence — and the lived experiences of so many Americans — tell us that our health will suffer. Property values will decline, and flood and fire insurance premiums will increase, if they’re still available at all in some disaster-prone parts of the country. Crop yields and water supplies will be threatened,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense Fund, which vowed to challenge the decision in court.
The Sierra Club, the country’s largest environmental organization, called the administration’s move “a brazen assault on the health and welfare of the American public,” and said it and its partners are considering all legal options in response, including litigation.
“With the stroke of a pen at a White House, Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin have formalized climate denialism as official government policy and moved to eliminate EPA’s ability to directly fight the climate crisis,” the organization said in a statement.
Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.