In a significant regulatory shift, the Environmental Protection Agency has annulled the 2009 Endangerment Finding, a crucial policy that classified six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, as threats to public health. This decision alters the foundation upon which federal regulatory bodies have enforced emission standards in the auto industry.
On Friday, at a Toyota dealership in Huntersville, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin described this move as the most substantial deregulation effort in U.S. history. The announcement was made near Asheville, a city still recovering from Hurricane Helene in 2024, a disaster intensified by elevated ocean temperatures.
“This was a devastating storm that hit western North Carolina, and it is very important to us at the EPA to help them rebuild,” Zeldin stated. “But what I’m not going to do is grant myself new powers that are not authorized in federal statute to take actions that amount to trillions of dollars of new regulation.”
EPA’s Authority Under the Clean Air Act
Lee Zeldin pointed out that the Clean Air Act does not explicitly empower the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. “If you read Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, you won’t find anything about global climate change,” he emphasized.
Despite this assertion, Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act authorizes regulation of “air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare” from motor vehicles. In a landmark decision in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Act’s broad definition of air pollutants includes greenhouse gases in Massachusetts vs. EPA.
This judicial interpretation led to the establishment of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, later upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2010. Peter Zalzal, a climate policy expert with the Environmental Defense Fund, noted, “The finding has been challenged in court. It was challenged immediately, and those challenges were rejected by the court.”
