The endangerment finding, issued under the Obama administration, determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare by driving climate change.
Former US president Barack Obama on Thursday issued a stark warning on Donald Trump’s decision to repeal a landmark scientific finding underpinning climate regulations, saying that it would leave Americans “less safe, less healthy.”
The endangerment finding, issued under the Obama administration, determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare by driving climate change.
“Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money,” the 44th US president wrote on social media platform X.
Earlier, Trump announced the repeal beside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and White House Budget director Russ Vought, who has long sought to revoke the finding and was a key architect of conservative policy blueprint Project 2025.
Its repeal would remove the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify, and comply with federal greenhouse gas emission standards for cars, but may not initially apply to stationary sources such as power plants.
What did Donald Trump repeal and why?
The Donald Trump administration took its most sweeping action to reverse US action on climate change on Thursday, announcing the repeal of a scientific finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health that served as the legal basis for federal climate regulations, and ending federal greenhouse gas emission standards for all vehicles and engines.
The moves come after a year of implementing a string of regulatory cuts and other actions intended to unfetter fossil fuel development and stymie the rollout of clean energy.
“Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said, saying it was the biggest deregulatory action in US history.
The endangerment finding was first adopted by the United States in 2009, and led the EPA to take action under the Clean Air Act of 1963 to curb emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and four other heat-trapping air pollutants from vehicles, power plants and other industries.
It came about after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 in the Massachusetts vs. EPA case that the agency has authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
The article originally appeared on Hindustan Times
