The Trump administration has rescinded the ‘endangerment finding’ that serves as the legal basis to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The United States has revoked a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for its actions to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
The decision on Thursday is the most aggressive move by President Donald Trump to roll back environmental regulations since the start of his second term.
Under his leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalised a rule rescinding a 2009 government declaration known as the “endangerment finding”.
It is the legal underpinning for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.
Established under the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama, the finding establishes that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.
But President Trump, a Republican, has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job”. The endangerment finding, he argued, is “one of the greatest scams in history”, adding that it “had no basis in fact” or law.
“On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world,” Trump said at a White House ceremony on Thursday.
He hailed the repeal of the endangerment finding as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far”.
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, who also attended the ceremony, described the endangerment finding as “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach”.
Rescinding the endangerment finding repeals all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks. It could also unleash a broader unravelling of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say.
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