On the heels of the hottest summeron recordand aUnited Nations reportwarning that global temperatures are likely to push climate risks to “increasingly dangerous heights,” the Trump administration overturned most of a Biden-era rule limiting climate pollution from power plants, thesecond-largest sourceof greenhouse gas emissions.
The Environmental Protection Agencyannounced a final plan Mondaythat guts the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards, which the agency said exceeds its authority under the Clean Air Act by requiring control technologies “that are not adequately demonstrated.” The agency also proposed revoking “all remaining GHG emissions requirements for power plants,” arguing their emissions “have no material impact on climate change.”
The plan to revoke the Carbon Pollution Standards was initially revealedlast spring.
In 2007, theSupreme Court ruledthat the Clean Air Act’s definition of air pollutants includes greenhouse gases, which cause climate change, and that if the EPA concludes that GHGs pose a danger to human health and the environment, it must act to reduce those emissions. The EPA made that “endangerment finding” in 2009.
“The Trump administration is now kicking the legs out from under the entire legal framework for regulating climate pollution by arguing that climate pollution does not harm human health or welfare,” said Zealan Hoover, a former senior advisor to the EPA during the Biden administration.
Hoover and other environmental and climate experts have not yet had a chance to review the specific arguments the agency is making to justify its actions.
Maggie Coulter, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, expects the Trump administration to make a “non-endangerment finding” so they don’t have to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at all. “That goes against really well-established science,” Coulter said. “Will this stand up in court? We would argue, definitely not.”
