Name: The EPA Ends the 'Endangerment' Finding, a Linchpin of U.S. Climate Regulation
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T19:37:00Z
Duration: 21 min 40 s
Description: The Environmental Protection Agency rescinds its 2009 assertion that it can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, because they "endanger" public health. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says this means cheaper cars and no more EV mandates.

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The Environmental Protection Agency rescinds its 2009 assertion that it can regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, because they "endanger" public health. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says this means cheaper cars and no more EV mandates.

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The EPA Ends the 'Endangerment' Finding, a Linchpin of U.S. Climate Regulation

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Announcer: From the opinion pages of "The Wall Street Journal," this is "Potomac Watch."

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with "The Wall Street Journal." We're joined today by my colleagues on "The Journal's" opinion pages, columnist Allysia Finley and Kim Strassel. The EPA is calling it the single largest deregulatory action in US history, suggesting it will save Americans more than $1.3 trillion. On Thursday, the agency pulled out a linchpin of US climate regulation, rescinding the so-called Endangerment Finding, a 2009 action that had declared greenhouse gas emissions a threat to public health and safety. Let's start with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin explaining his view of this move.

We're not gonna rely on pessimistic bad assumptions that were made in 2009 that have proven to be inaccurate. We're going to rely always on present-day facts. We're going to follow the law. And we know confidently that we can do both, protect the environment and grow the economy.

Allysia, the history here may take some unpacking, but the Clean Air Act empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles that in the EPA's judgment shall cause or contribute to air pollution, which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. And the first argument was whether carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions constitute that kind of public health threat. And my understanding is the EPA took the position that they did not, until this question reached the Supreme Court in a 2007 case, Massachusetts v EPA, where the Supreme Court said, yes, that a carbon dioxide, other greenhouse emissions can qualify under the Clean Air Act as pollutants. And then that leads to the 2009 finding that they indeed were threat to public health and safety. So, Allysia, did I get that history all correct? And what do you make of the EPA's move now a decade and a half later to reverse that Endangerment Finding?

Well, it's a very complicated history actually. What happened is that the states, Democratic states sued, and this was during the 2000, and argued that the EPA was essentially negligent in not regulating carbon emissions or greenhouse gas emissions from autos in particular. And so with the Supreme Court held in that Massachusetts v EPA case, which was a five-four majority with Anthony Kennedy siding with the liberals, saying that, well, under a very capacious interpretation of the law, greenhouse gas emissions could be construed as pollutants, and therefore the EPA had an obligation to determine whether it had regulatory authority over them. And that would involve doing a detailed analysis to determine whether they could be reasonably anticipated to endanger public health and welfare. Ergo, the Obama administration EPA, in 2009, in my opinion, did a kind of slip-shot analysis that reviewed a lot of, you know, left-wing studies, or maybe they weren't left wing, but they were definitely promoted by liberal climate scientists that claimed that carbon emissions have all kinds of downstream effects on climate. They could cause flooding, they could cause increased storms, by causing higher temperatures, they could increase the spread of viruses, they could cause more migration, or, you know, you could go down the list of, you know, the parade of horribles that they mentioned in this Endangerment Finding. And therefore, because they had these kind of indirect consequences, the EPA did have, not just authority, but obligation to regulate them, which served as the basis of these kind of indirect or backdoor electric vehicle mandate that started under Obama and then the Biden administration essentially doubled down on.

But the result of this ending of the Endangerment Finding means, Kim, that, in this administration's view at least, the EPA no longer has the legal authority to impose those kinds of regulations on the auto market. The EPA is saying that it projects about a $2,400 amount of savings for new cars and trucks for Americans, also maybe changes in vehicle features and design. One thing that Administrator Lee Zeldin is calling out is that stop-start feature for many cars where you pull up and if you hit a red light and you push the brake at the red light and come to a complete stop, the engine will shut off, and then it will restart when you take your foot off the brake. This is a quote that listeners may identify with, Lee Zeldin says, "As I traveled across the 50 states this past year, I heard from countless Americans who not only dislike the start-stop feature, but passionately advocated for this mechanism to be a thing of the past," unquote. And so, Kim, it is a real linchpin is the word that I used at the top, but it is a real pulling of a linchpin if this administration is now taking the view that the EPA simply does not have the authority to make those kinds of demands on the US auto market.

Yeah, by the way, count me as one of those probably intensely annoying people that when she goes up to a car rental counter and I have to rent a car, I'm like, "Please don't give me, I do not want one of those vehicles that turns off every time I hit the brake." So we have to go through long test things for me to get one that I approve of. Look, this is really important because of the enduring aspect of this, assuming that it passes legal muster, and we will get to that court question. But remember, the Clean Air Act says government's supposed to regulate air pollutants. And while there were certainly administrations on the left and the right that had different views of the outer parameters of how much you could regulate under the traditional definition of pollutants, things like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides and lead, there are certain, again, outer parameters. When you brought the Endangerment Finding in, when the Obama team did, it suddenly opened up this huge vista of just about every product in the United States, that if an administration wanted to regulate and use carbon as the excuse for doing that, greenhouse gases, it allowed 'em to wrap their fingers into whole new areas, and then to really dramatically impose these regulations that had the effect of really changing people's lives. So I think that there were more than seven different major regulations on vehicles under Democratic presidents, power plants, industrial facilities. More recently, yeah, the Biden team views this as an excuse to really crack down on appliances. You know, everything from refrigerators to air conditioners, a huge range of consumer goods. This has allowed states to get in on the act with very silly proposals, like those that you see out of Allysia's home state, to get rid of all combustion engines. So this takes that away. And that's what's so important is it's no longer a kind of ping-pong back and forth with a Republican administration coming in. This is the argument, you can't do it anymore. It's gonna be enormously more cost effective to go forward this way. The Trump administration estimated that just the seven regulations on vehicles had added more than $1 trillion in aggregate costs to products. And I think the other thing that's worth noting about this is the care that has gone into overturning this. There's been a lot of attention on the legal problems with this Endangerment Finding, and Lee Zeldin has very much worked on that. But I would note that Chris Wright last year also attempted to bring some groundwork. Lee Zeldin had talked about some of the problems with the science, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, brought in five respected scientists who wrote an entirely new report last year on what do we really know about climate science? And it was called, "A critical review of the Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on US Climate." And if you dig into that report, which I think was very honest in its appraisal, that there are a great deal of unknowns out there. And that in fact, in some ways, in a way the left would never acknowledge, there are actually some beneficial aspects of greenhouse gases, in increased greenhouse gases. So it's a more holistic picture of the very messy reality of climate research, that is gonna be important as well too, because it sort of washes away this argument that there is an obvious link between rising greenhouse gases and an endangerment to human health. Remember, that's what we're talking about, an Endangerment Finding. I think you add their legal rationale together and this scientific basis together, and it's a very strong foundation for getting rid of this Endangerment Finding.

Allysia, is this moved by the Trump administration probably going to the federal courts next, whether it's some green groups that sue or maybe a state, or a group of states that sue? And how do you see that legal fight shaping up?

Well, I think the climate crowd, a lot of these climate groups and even states have already threatened to sue. And they'll probably make a claim that the administration's rescission violates the APA, the Administrative Procedures Act, and that it's arbitrary capricious because their, whatever, scientific judgements are inaccurate and such. Now, I mean, I think one of the interesting, I guess you could say hiccups right now, or in my view, is that if you go back to the Massachusetts v EPA case, many of the conservatives actually didn't even think states had legal standing to sue and challenge to the EPAs inability to regulate, or refusal to regulate carbon emissions. So the question is, are they going to, in this case, maybe judges may actually say, "Well, we actually don't think you have standing, these groups have standing, 'cause you're not gonna be directly harmed by the rescission of this finding?" Which is true to a large extent that any kind of effect would flow from the rescission of other regulations, not in the rescission of this Endangerment Finding. So that's one possible result. It could also be that this tees up a larger challenge to the Massachusetts v EPA decision from 2007 because the Trump administration is arguing that, well, essentially that decision was wrong, that we do not have the express power under the law to regulate these emissions. And it is pointing to the major questions doctrine that the court has strengthened in recent years with its decision in the West Virginia v EPA case, Biden versus Nebraska, and some others, that holds that any kind of executive action that has political or economic significance requires express authorization from Congress. And it's pretty clear that Congress did not authorize any time for the EPA to regulate it. In fact, Congress has debated this issue many times in previous years, before essentially the Obama EPA irrigated itself authority. And you can recall the debate in Congress over a cap and trade program, which would've allowed the EPA indirectly to regulate carbon emissions across the economy. Instead, the EPA or the Obama administration essentially unilaterally seized this authority for itself, which would violate the Supreme Court's major questions doctrine. I mean, also, the Trump administration also points to Loper Bright Enterprise's decision that overturned the Chevron deference. And the judges have a role to play in actually construing the text of a statute, even when it appears somewhat vague, and that actually the Massachusetts v EPA decision actually would've violated or now that Loper Bright precedent from a couple of years ago. So there are a lot of legal arguments that the administration is making that I think actually are very compelling and may actually be stronger and carry more weight than the APA one that the states are making.

To underline that point, here's part of what the EPA is saying in this rule. It says it determines that the Clean Air Act does not authorized the agency to prescribe emission standards in response to global climate change concerns for multiple reasons, including the best reading of the statutory terms air pollution, cause, contribute, reasonably be anticipated to endanger. It goes on to say the statutory interpretation is corroborated by application of the major questions doctrine, as Allysia mentions. And then this, the EPA further determines that greenhouse gases emission standards for new motor vehicles and engines do not impact in any material way the public health and welfare concerns identified in 2009. So, Kim, part of that last argument, I think, is that the US Emissions from automobiles and the difference that can be made is dwarfed by everything else that's happening in the world, including China's continuing to build coal plants at a pretty steady pace. And all of that is a way bigger impact on the climate 50 years or 100 years than whatever the EPA is doing with these start-stop rules for US auto manufacturers. On the point about the interpretation of the Clean Air Act, the EPA is really sounding kind of like the dissenters in this Massachusetts v EPA Supreme Court case. So here is a piece of what Justice Scalia, Antonin Scalia wrote in dissent. He said that, "Regulating the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, which is alleged to be causing global climate change, is not akin to regulating the concentration of some substance that is polluting the air." So, Kim, even, you know, without the framework there of the major questions doctrine, Justice Scalia basically making the argument that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant in the way that Congress was thinking about pollutants when it passed the Clean Air Act. So I mean, my guess is that Massachusetts v EPA with the current Supreme Court would not come out the way that it came out in 2007. On the other hand, there is stare decisis and some Supreme Court justices may be inclined to let a case like that lie if it's already been decided. So it's a separate question of whether the court is gonna be interested in taking it up again in the wake of any litigation that comes out from this new EPA reversal of that 2009 rule.

We don't know what will happen, but I find it very hard to believe that the Supreme Court will not feel compelled to look at this again. I mean, the thing that most cuts against that argument is just that it is, in the grand sweep of things, a relatively recent and large precedent, Mass v EPA. And so to pick it up again as soon as it is is certainly going to encourage some on the left to claim that the court is politicized, it doesn't believe in stare decisis, but this is one of those cases, it was just so wrongly decided. And I point again to the fact that it was a five-four decision, and it was Anthony Kennedy, always questing to be relevant, who sided with the liberals in this? And it was a poor decision at that. And then you just look, this is not a very hard one, I think, if you look at it. I mean, the Clean Air Act is as old as I am, okay? And that's pretty old, at this point. And I can promise you that when it was passed, no one was talking about greenhouse gas emissions. We were talking about the very immediate pollutants that were causing people to have bronchial issues, et cetera, and smog in the air, and that was the idea behind it. So to now try to add this in there and argue that somehow that act covers everything else in the economy on an issue that wasn't even related, I think that most of the conservative justices would find that hard to swallow, before you even got to the major questions doctrine. I would also point out that, and this is very worth reminding people, this gets to some of the intelligence that went into the Trump administration's first-year appointments to the courts. And we've talked about this a little bit in the past, but Donald Trump was very much advised by some of his legal counsel at the time to focus on putting judges, especially on the Supreme Court, that had a lot of experience in administrative law, because this had increasingly become this enormous question, the regulatory state and how it had balanced out of its constraints and was now running government and that Congress was just being swept aside by all of these regulators and administrations that were deciding to reinterpret laws in ways that gave them vast new powers. And I mean, this is what Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and others have really spent a lifetime focused on, Amy Coney Barrett. So I find it hard to believe that they will resist the temptation to bring this up, especially in light of, Allysia mentioned, the recent really important victory, Loper Bright, which overturned Chevron. That's another classic example of this, of the court being asked to overturn a precedent that very much dealt with the administrative state. The court was very willing to do that. And so I think you could very much see a repeat of that in this scenario.

Allysia, we'll give you the last word for today, but what's your view on how much and how quickly automakers, right, might respond to this move by the Trump administration? It seems in recent years, they have been only too happy to try to placate whichever side is in power, whether it's the Biden administration trying to tighten these kinds of mandates, then the Trump administration trying to rescind those. But if this auto stop-start feature is as despised as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says it is when he travels around and talks to Americans, do you think it's something that automakers will move quickly to take out of their next year's models, or are they gonna be waiting and watching and biding their time because they assume there's gonna be some sort of litigation and they don't wanna make any changes until they see the final outcome of what that might look like?

Look, automakers plan their models on a multi-year trajectory. So right now they're planning their models for 2030 and 2031. So you're not gonna see any immediate effects. I think the reason why you're seeing or you have heard they've taken about, the big three at least have taken about $50 billion in write down on their electric vehicles is because they think the administration is going to prevail on this point ultimately. And they also think that the administration and Republicans in Congress are gonna prevail on the rescission of California's waiver to set its own emission standards for vehicles and impose its own electric mandate. I mean, there are a lot of other reasons why they're taking these write downs. In fact, the consumer demand for these electric vehicles haven't met, or haven't met their expectations, and they are losing a lot of money. But I think they are also pretty confident in the administration, and ultimately when this goes to court, the administration is going to prevail. I wouldn't be surprised if you may see some amicus briefs from these industry groups supporting the administration.

Thank you, Allysia and Kim. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at pwpodcast@wsj.com. If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of "Potomac Watch."