WATCH LIVE: Trump and Zeldin announce end to scientific basis for US action on climate change
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration will rescind Thursday a scientific discovery that has long been the central basis of U.S. work to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, the White House announced.
President Donald Trump is expected to speak at 1:30 p.m. EST. Watch the live stream in our video player above.
The EPA will issue a final rule rescinding the government’s 2009 declaration known as the hazard finding. Obama-era policy has determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and well-being.
He watches: Researchers face serious hurdles in measuring Antarctica’s fastest melting glacier
President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin “will formalize the rescission of the 2009 Obama-era threat resolution” at a White House ceremony, White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said Tuesday.
She said the measure “would be the largest deregulation measure in American history, and would save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulation.” The bulk of the savings will stem from lower new vehicle costs, with the EPA predicting the average per-vehicle savings will reach more than $2,400 for light-duty cars, SUVs and popular trucks, Levitt said.
He watches: Why melting glaciers on Earth matters more than we think
The hazard finding is the legal basis for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for cars, power plants, and other sources of pollution that heat the planet. It is used to justify regulations, such as automobile emissions standards, that aim to protect against increasingly dire threats from climate change — deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
Legal challenges are definitely coming
Legal challenges are certain to face any measure that would effectively repeal these regulations, with environmental groups describing the shift as the single largest attack in US history on federal efforts to address climate change.
“The Trump administration is abdicating its primary responsibility to keep us safe from extreme weather and accelerating climate change,” said Abigail Dehlen, president of the nonprofit law firm EarthJustice. “There is no way to reconcile the EPA’s decision with the law, science, and reality of the disasters that hit us hard every year. Earthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court.”
Read more: Scientists say another hot year is a “warning shot” for a dangerous and changing climate
EPA Press Secretary Brigitte Hirsch said the Obama-era ruling was “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said the EPA was “actively working to deliver historic action to the American people.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order directing the EPA to report on the “legality and viability of application” of the hazard finding. Conservatives and some Republicans in Congress have long sought to repeal what they view as overly restrictive and economically harmful rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman appointed by Trump to lead the EPA last year, criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying they were “willing to bankrupt the country” trying to combat climate change.
Announcing the proposed rule last July, Zeldin said Democrats “came to this conclusion of danger and then were able to put all these regulations on vehicles and airplanes and stationary sources, to essentially regulate sectors of our economy out of existence.” “It cost the Americans a lot of money.”
Peter Zalzal, an attorney and associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, responded that the EPA would encourage more climate pollution, higher health insurance and fuel costs and thousands of avoidable premature deaths. He and other advocates said the EPA focuses only on industry costs while ignoring the climate and health benefits of the rule.
Zelzal said Zeldin’s effort is “deeply cynical and damaging, given the body of scientific evidence supporting this conclusion, the devastating climate damage Americans are currently experiencing, and the EPA’s clear commitment to protecting the health and well-being of Americans.”
The Supreme Court upheld the risk finding
The Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that global warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision, in the case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the hazard finding, including a 2023 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
After Zeldin’s proposal to rescind the rule, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reevaluated the science underlying the 2009 discovery and concluded that it was “rigorous, has stood the test of time, and is now supported by stronger evidence.”
A panel of NAS scientists said in a September report that much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved. “The evidence of the current and future harm caused by human-caused greenhouse gases to human health and well-being is beyond scientific dispute,” the committee said.
Associated Press writers Seung-Min Kim in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
