Trump EPA Repeals The Scientific Finding That Greenhouse Gases Are Harmful, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Carbon Dioxide Was Still Legally Permitted To Be A Problem

WASHINGTON. The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized the rescission of its 2009 endangerment finding, the determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, resolving a long-standing concern within the fossil fuel industry that the federal government remained legally obligated to acknowledge climate change exists.

The endangerment finding, issued in response to the Supreme Court's 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, had served for sixteen years as the legal predicate under which the federal government could regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Its repeal, agency officials confirmed, also rescinds the federal greenhouse gas emission standards for new motor vehicles and strips the EPA of the authority to limit such emissions from cars, trucks, and power plants. The agency emphasized that it was not reconsidering whether greenhouse gases trap heat, whether human activity has raised their atmospheric concentration, or whether the resulting warming harms human health, three questions it acknowledged remained settled. It was reconsidering only whether any of that should continue to be the federal government's responsibility.

The rescission proceeded over the objection of the National Academies of Sciences, which, asked to reassess the science underpinning the original finding, concluded that the 2009 determination was accurate, had stood the test of time, and was now reinforced by even stronger evidence. Agency leadership characterized the move as the largest deregulatory action in EPA history, a description that did not specify what new scientific information had arrived since 2009 to justify reopening the matter. A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the action had been the oil and gas sector's single highest regulatory priority for more than a decade. "The science was always clear," the official said. "What changed is that we decided to stop letting it apply to us."

The President, who has for years described climate change as "a hoax" and more recently as "the green new scam," signed the executive order in January 2025 directing the agency to evaluate the finding, a process that concluded this week with the agency evaluating it out of existence. The final rule was published in the Federal Register on February 18 and takes effect April 20, ensuring that any future federal effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions will first have to demonstrate, under the new framework, a legal basis the administration has just spent a year removing.

California and a coalition of states, along with environmental groups, announced plans to challenge the repeal in court, a process expected to take years and to unfold before a judiciary substantially populated by jurists who had argued, prior to confirmation, that the original finding reached too far. Climate scientists remaining at the agency, many of whom had already received layoff notices and grant terminations, noted that the atmosphere had registered its ten hottest years on record during the interval between the finding's issuance and its repeal, and would not be consulted on the rule.

At press time, EPA officials confirmed that the planet's atmosphere had not yet been served with the relevant paperwork and was continuing to retain heat as though the finding remained in full effect.