The Environmental Protection Agency officially proposed to terminate what President Trump has long called the “climate hoax.” If successful, the federal government will be out of the climate regulation business with no hope of returning to it without congressional authorization.
The Trump EPA proposed to rescind a 2009 Obama EPA rule called the “endangerment finding.” In that rulemaking, the Obama EPA determined that emissions of greenhouse gases threatened human health and welfare by causing global warming. Simultaneously with the EPA proposal, the Trump Department of Energy issued a scientific report summarizing why emissions are actually a good thing and threaten nothing.
The scientific findings, however, are superfluous since EPA never had express authority from Congress to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act in the first place. Controversy and litigation about EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases resulted in the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. In that case, the Court determined in a 5-4 holding that EPA could, but did not have to, regulate emissions.
But the decision was controversial. Clean Air Act co-author and famed Democrat Congressman, the late John Dingell, afterwards stated: “I think the Supreme Court came up with a very much erroneous decision on whether the Clean Air Act covers greenhouse gases. I was present when we wrote that legislation and we thought it was clear enough that it did not, and we didn’t clarify it thinking that even the Supreme Court was not stupid enough to make that finding.”
Following the decision, the Bush EPA decided that it would not regulate emissions. When the Obama administration came into power in 2009, it reversed the Bush EPA’s decision and began using the endangerment finding as the basis for regulation of smokestack and tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases.
Although many questioned the scientific basis of the Obama EPA’s decision, it was impossible to get a judicial hearing on the science. Federal judges informally decided decades ago that they would defer to regulatory agency decisions on questions of science.
With the endangerment finding apparently firmly in place, the Obama administration, and later the Biden administration, proceeded to regulate tailpipe and power plant emissions of greenhouse gases.
Cracks in the ability of EPA to use the endangerment finding soon began to appear. In 2014, the Supreme Court determined that the Clean Air Act did not authorize EPA to use the endangerment finding to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases from industrial smokestacks. In 2022, the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA nullified an effort to regulate emission from power plants, holding that EPA could not launch major regulatory programs without express congressional authorization.
Today, all that remains of EPA’ endangerment finding-based rules are tailpipe regulations in the form of the Biden EPA’s de facto EV mandate, a rule that the Trump administration is in the process of reversing.
Since the Obama EPA made the endangerment finding, electricity prices have soared. Gas prices and inflation soared during the Biden administration. Tens of thousands of high-paying coal miner jobs have been destroyed and their communities devastated.
Our electricity grid has been made less reliable by the advent of existentially subsidized wind and solar power. Periods of peak electricity demand like summer heat waves and winter cold spells now routinely result in blackout/brownout warnings. This problem will get worse before it gets better with the ongoing electricity demand from AI data centers and the re-industrialization of America.
Blue states and their climate activist allies will no doubt sue the Trump EPA to stop the rescission of the endangerment finding. But all this will accomplish is the Supreme Court almost certainly reversing its original sin committed in Massachusetts v. EPA. Some of us can’t wait.
Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer, publishes JunkScience.com and is on X @JunkScience.
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