Trump Moves To Gut US Power To Regulate Greenhouse Gases

By: Benjamin J. Hulac, Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Cutting against overwhelming scientific evidence, the Trump administration is trying to eliminate the legal foundation that empowers the U.S. government to regulate greenhouses gases, which warm Earth to a perilous degree.

The Environmental Protection Agency this summer moved to revoke its own authority to regulate the six primary heat-trapping gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, a highly potent gas that seeps from natural gas infrastructure. The agency this week closed the public comment period for the proposal, which is not finalized and will likely face legal challenges in federal court.

This attempt is the first time the EPA has tried to roll back the authority, called the “endangerment finding,” since its establishment in 2009 after

“For over a decade, the EPA has acknowledged that greenhouse gases are irreparably warming our climate and harm our communities,” New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said Monday. “We will fight this dangerous action and protect our communities.”

Platkin and 22 other attorneys general, plus cities and counties, submitted a letter Monday to EPA, arguing the agency’s move is illegal and built on bad science.

In a separate request, all 11 Democratic members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation urged EPA to drop its “dangerous” proposal
request.

What’s at stake for NJ if EPA regulations are undoneA repeal of the 2009 legal authority, which allows EPA to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, would deal a punishing and expansive blow to federal efforts to limit emissions from power plants, automobiles and industrial sources of carbon pollution.

Under presidential administrations of former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the EPA invoked the finding, saying that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and could be regulated under the Clean Air Act, to limit emissions from vehicles, power plants and industrial sites.

If the legal authority is revoked, federal administrations would be blocked from using that law to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

“Repealing the endangerment finding would go against science and EPA’s core mission to protect public health and the environment,” Callie Sharp, an attorney with the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a nonpartisan environmental law group, told EPA officials in August at a hearing.

“It is clear that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, both now and in the future. Those dangers will worsen if the EPA chooses to destroy its own policy tools to meaningfully address climate change,” the Democratic lawmakers said, noting New Jersey’s exposure to extreme flooding due to sea-level rise.

“New Jerseyans know all too well the devastating impacts of the worsening climate crisis to our cities, coastlines, and communities,” said Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th), while Rep. Rob Menendez (D-8th) said EPA should “reverse course on this dangerous proposal” and recommit to doing the important, science-based work that the American people rely on, protecting all of us from worsening natural disasters, extreme heat, and floods.”

Both men sit on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has EPA jurisdiction. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th) is also a committee member.

On Sept. 17, the National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a study that found the scientific proof that humans are placing current and future life at risk by burning fossil fuels — the core scientific fact of climate change — is rock solid.

Trump, Republicans raring to slash environmental rules, programs“This study was undertaken with the ultimate aim of informing the EPA, following its call for public comments, as it considers the status of the endangerment finding,” said Shirley Tilghman, professor of molecular biology and public affairs, emeritus, and former president, Princeton University, and chair of the committee that wrote the report.

When he announced in July the move to attempt to rescind the finding, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from Long Island, called the decision “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.”

“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” Zeldin said in July as he announced the proposal at an Indiana car dealership.

President Donald Trump has for years cast doubt on established climate science, and his administration has proposed deep budget cuts for the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA — 55%, 27% and 24%, respectively. Together, those departments perform some of the world’s most advanced climate science.

The Trump administration and Republican allies in Congress have taken a series of steps to weaken climate programs and pollution regulation, including allowing two New Jersey medical plants to pollute more, scores of industrial sites to release more hazardous air pollutants and to block New Jersey vehicle rules.

To bolster its case to end the 2009 holding, the result of a 2007 ruling from the Supreme Court that forced the U.S. to regulate carbon dioxide and other pollutants, the Trump administration has leaned on a recent Energy Department report that found human climate change is “less damaging economically than commonly believed.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright, an executive from the hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, industry — a section of the oil and gas business — picked the authors of that report, which dozens of scientists debunked.

In their rebuttal, more than 85 scientists, including Pamela McElwee of Rutgers University, said “key assertions – including claims of no trends in extreme weather and the supposed broad benefits of carbon dioxide—are either misleading or fundamentally incorrect.”

“As someone who works on biodiversity and ecosystems, a glaring omission of the report is the complete absence of any review of the data indicating our natural world is rapidly changing in response to climate change,” McElwee said in a statement. “Rising temperatures and more frequent extreme events like marine heat waves, among other impacts, are changing where species live, their population sizes, and when they hibernate or migrate.”