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Agence France-Presse

US President Donald Trump on Thursday revoked a landmark scientific finding underpinning US regulations to curb planet-warming pollution, marking his biggest rollback of climate policy to date.
The repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” was paired with the immediate elimination of greenhouse gas standards on automobiles.
But it also places a host of other climate rules in jeopardy, including carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and methane leaks for oil and gas producers.
Legal challenges were expected to follow swiftly.
“This determination had no basis in fact, had none whatsoever, and no basis in law,” Trump said at a White House event.
The US president dismissed concerns that the repeal could cost lives by worsening climate change, reiterating his belief that human-caused global warming was a hoax.

“I tell them, don’t worry about it, because it has nothing to do with public health,” Trump said. “This was all a scam, a giant scam.”
The administration also framed the measure as a cost-saving move, claiming it would generate more than US$1 trillion in regulatory savings and bring down new car costs by thousands of dollars.
The announcement immediately drew condemnation from Democrats and green groups.
“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,” warned former president Barack Obama, under whose government the finding was created.
Manish Bapna, president of the non-profit Natural Resources Defence Council, said it was the “single biggest attack in history on the United States federal government’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis”.
The 2009 “endangerment finding” was a determination based on overwhelming scientific consensus that six greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare by fuelling climate change.
It came about as a result of a prolonged legal battle ending in a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts vs EPA, which ruled that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and directed the EPA to determine whether they posed a danger to public health and welfare.
While it initially applied only to vehicle emissions, it later became the legal foundation for a broader suite of climate regulations, which are now vulnerable.
The final text of the repeal will be closely scrutinised.
Procedurally, the draft proposal argued that greenhouse gases should not be treated as pollutants in the traditional sense because their effects on human health are indirect and global rather than local.
Regulating them within US borders, it contends, cannot meaningfully resolve a worldwide problem.
But the Supreme Court has reaffirmed the endangerment finding multiple times – including as recently as 2022, when the court’s composition was much the same as today.
The scientific arguments are just as shaky, critics say. The draft repeal sought to play down the impact of human-caused climate change, citing a study commissioned by an Energy Department working group of sceptics to produce a report challenging the scientific consensus.
That report was widely panned by researchers, who said it was riddled with errors and misrepresented the studies it cited. The working group itself was disbanded following a lawsuit by non-profits that argued it was improperly convened.
The administration has also leaned heavily on putative cost savings, without detailing how its figures have been calculated.
Environmental advocates say the administration was ignoring the other side of the ledger, including lives saved from reduced pollution and fuel savings from more efficient vehicles.
They also warn the rollback would further skew the market towards more fuel-guzzling cars and trucks, undermining the American auto industry’s ability to compete in the global race towards electric vehicles.


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News

World

United States & Canada

US president confounds critics as he repeals finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health


US president confounds critics as he repeals finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health.


Trump flouts science to revoke landmark US climate finding, calling it ‘giant scam’

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}US president confounds critics as he repeals finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health

US president confounds critics as he repeals finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health