Reuters reports sources tell them that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to terminate its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under a "Clean Air Act" premised upon a previous assertion that they endanger public health through influences on climate change, a primary legal foundation applied to discourage fossil energy use.
As first reported in The Washington Post, the EPA proposal for reconsidering the endangerment finding was submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), along with other federal agencies for review on June 30, 2025.
Such a development would have huge timely, consequential benefits given that hydrocarbons provide more than 80% of U.S. and energy globally, a demand which will increase dramatically to power massive data centers essential to support an inevitably emergent AI revolution.
That U.S. and global competition for AI supremacy is already setting off a four-way battle among electric utilities trying to keep the lights on, tech companies that like to tout their climate credentials, consumers angry at rising electricity prices, and federal and state government regulators using climate alarmism to push more electric vehicles on overburdened power grids.
Whereas the U.S. Supreme Court in a split 5-4 decision, in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), granted the agency authority under the Clean Air Act to render a scientific finding whether greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health, it did not require the agency to do so.
Nor does the reported plan to end its regulatory authority over such emissions require any such scientific judgement, but simply reverses a 2009 Obama administration EPA finding purporting that the agency can do so because carbon dioxide and methane from burning fossil fuels was a hazard to people because it contributed to polluting the climate.
That endangerment finding ignored the conclusions of EPA’s own internal research report at the time: "Given the downward trend in temperatures since 1998 (which some think will continue until at least 2030), there is no particular reason to rush into decisions based upon a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."
The study author, a senior analyst at the EPA's National Center for Environment Economics, was subsequently removed from his position after serving for 38 years.
Nevertheless, that finding became the basis for arbitrary and costly rules regulating emissions from car and truck exhausts, coal and gas-fired power plants, and methane from the oil and gas industry.
A 2011 directive established by the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration set economy standard emission limits for automobiles, pickup trucks, and vans sold in the U.S.
The power grab also gave EPA influence over the design and operations of virtually every major project in which fossil fuel is combusted or CO2 emissions are released, including electrical power generation, refineries, iron and steel mills, pulp and paper mills, and cement production.
Another 2011 ruling put EPA squarely in corporate boardrooms and boiler houses in requiring any new source of greenhouse gas emissions exceeding 100,000 tons of CO2 per year or plant modification adding 75,000 tons annually was subject to permit approval based upon undefined case-by-case "best available control technology" assessments.
A 2022 Democratically-controlled Congress doubled down on the 2009 endangerment finding by including language in their climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that labels greenhouse gases as pollutants.
On the first day of his second term, President Trump declared a "national energy emergency" and signed an executive order, Unleashing America Energy to put an end to former President Joe Biden's climate agenda.
Trump asked his EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin who had told his confirmation hearing the agency had authority but no obligation to regulate greenhouse gases to submit recommendations "on the legality and continuing applicability" of the endangerment finding.
Administrator Zeldin enthusiastically responded in March, declaring, "Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more."
Zeldin added, "Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission.”
In June, President Trump announced plans to repeal all limits on greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.
Then in July, White House budget director Ross Vought said an endangerment finding review was "long overdue" because it had led to regulations that he said harmed the economy.
In seeking to reverse the endangerment finding, the Trump EPA is making a legal argument that previous administrators overstepped their legal authority and "imposed trillions of dollars of costs on Americans."
Expect a long legal battle ahead, one richly funded by wind and solar subsidy seekers.
And perhaps a realistic endangerment finding is truly warranted, one that addresses the EPA's threat to vital sectors that drive our economy, provide jobs and ensure that we have affordable energy, products and services.
It's time to replace those ideological Clean Air Act filters, get the EPA out of the climate regulation nonsense, and clear the atmosphere of all government alphabet agency powers to invoke unwarranted intrusions into our free markets, business, and lives.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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