We’re All in This Together
Endangerment Finding is in Danger
By Nancy Nickerson
In your perusal of climate-related literature, have you heard of the Endangerment Finding? I had not, but recently I have learned a lot about this. I took for granted the protections that have been afforded us all through the Clean Air Act and that have been in place for decades and monitored/regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But now those protections are in danger of being eliminated.
What is the Endangerment Finding?
This summer the EPA announced it plans to roll back the agency’s 2009 determination that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare. The Endangerment Finding came about from a Supreme Court ruling (2007’s Mass v. EPA) that said, according to Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as ‘air pollutants’ if EPA determines that they threaten public health or welfare. This was further solidified in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Congress codified EPA’s mandate by explicitly defining climate-warming greenhouse gases as air pollutants. Congress amended the Clean Air Act to enable the EPA to further regulate climate pollution.
The Trump Rollback
President Trump’s first EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler (a former coal lobbyist), didn’t question or challenge this. But the new Trump administration, bolder and more extreme – some would say reckless – is taking a different approach.
According to Dana Nuccitelli, climate scientist and policy expert for Citizens Climate Lobby, Section 202 of the Clean Air Act has only been used to regulate direct health impacts from local and regional pollution, not indirect health impacts from global pollution like greenhouse gases, which are well-mixed in the atmosphere. The Trump EPA is arguing that because Congress did not explicitly delegate to EPA the authority to regulate pollutants based on their indirect global impacts on public health then the agency cannot do so.
In the words of climatologist Michael Mann of the University of Pennsylvania, “It takes a special sort of cognitive dissonance to deny, as the current administration is doing, that fossil fuel burning endangers us at a time when this is plain as day to the person on the street.”
Time to Act
Congress has done its job in passing the Clean Air Act and consistently supporting EPA climate-related regulations over the past three-plus decades. Here, the Trump EPA is attempting to defy Congressional effort and intent by reinterpreting the law.
BUT there is a public comment period on this change that has recently been extended to September 22nd! Groups and individuals will be weighing in on this change, and we encourage you to do likewise. Contact your congressional representatives and newspapers. Or to submit a comment to the EPA, go to: https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/proposed-rule-reconsideration-2009-endangerment-finding#extension.
