Latest news with #EndangermentFinding
Forbes
23-03-2025
- Business
- Forbes
If Trump Destroys Inflation Reduction Act, Economic Fallout May Come
Block Island, R.I: Deepwater Wind installing the first offshore wind farm at Block Island, Rhode ... More Island, August 14, 2016. (Photo by Mark Harrington/Newsday RM via Getty Images) Louisiana may be known as an oil and gas state, but it is now getting its feet wet by trying to build offshore wind energy developments in the Gulf of Mexico. Even though the deal has bipartisan support, the Trump Administration is trying to block all such wind projects in federal waters. President Trump signed an executive order that stopped all offshore wind energy projects. Trump doesn't believe in climate change and thinks fossil fuels are the way to go. What makes him tick? The administration said this strategy will lower energy costs, create more jobs, and meet the growing energy demand. However, look to ruby-red Louisiana, which views offshore wind as a job creator and a vehicle to reduce electricity price volatility. 'We are at an inflection point now on the way energy economics works,' says Fox Swim, a senior solar researcher for Aurora Solar, in a Zoom interview. 'This administration is willing to break the law and norms. It is willing to inflict economic damage on the rest of the country to fulfill its vision. The renewable energy industry must lean hard on state governments. If states value stability in our grid and renewable energies, then these jurisdictions must do the right thing.' The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is in danger now. It passed in 2022, creating green energy programs nationwide. But if the projects die, economic stimulation does as well. If the Trump Administration gets rid of the IRA, then Energy Innovation said it would cost consumers $32 billion in energy bills, while gross domestic product falls by $190 billion by 2035. We lose hundreds of thousands of jobs too. Trump cannot simply eliminate the law, but he can gradually dismantle it. He could slow the rollout or make fossil fuel investments more valuable than those in renewable energy. So even if the law is still on the books, it might not have much of an effect. Swim points to the Endangerment Finding, the scientific and legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases that cause climate change. In 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency started overseeing those emissions under the Clean Air Act. She thinks the administration will rewrite the law to say, 'Climate is not a problem.' She also believes the administration will revise the IRA to say which technologies qualify for tax credits. So, here's the scoop: Aurora's new survey revealed that 57% of business owners favor keeping the IRA, while only 29% want it gone. And guess what? A whopping 78% of business owners want to make the most of their IRA benefits. Now, let's talk about homeowners. Awareness of the IRA has skyrocketed from 51% in 2024 to a colossal 77% in 2025. Interestingly, 48% of installers believe that a reduction in funding from the IRA would negatively impact their business. 'Joe Biden created the IRA, and he fundamentally shifted the way we do clean energy in the U.S. Trump could just as easily shift the needle in the opposite direction,' says Swim. 'The government uses subsidies to promote technologies and industrial policy. The subsidies must exist to bring renewables to the level where they can compete with extremely subsidized petroleum industries.' GULF OF MEXICO - JUNE 25: The Transocean Discoverer Enterprise drillship burns off gas collected at ... More the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana on June 25, 2010. An approaching tropical disturbance may force collecting operations involving ships and other siphoning equipment to be temporarily halted. This may cause oil to flow unchecked from the well until the weather improves and siphoning operations can be restored. (Photo by) New York State planned to transform one of its largest fossil fuel plants into a renewable energy powerhouse. It would've used offshore wind energy, battery storage, and geothermal power to make clean energy. But guess what? Those plans are on hold because of Trump's executive order that put a stop to all offshore wind projects. This deal would've been a game-changer, providing power to 2 million homes and generating a massive 2.6 gigawatts of electricity. The Trump administration has started undoing over 30 environmental rules that were put in place by the previous administration. They're eliminating caps on power plant emissions, reducing protections for rivers and streams, and making it easier for cars to pollute. The president has given his EPA the green light to keep some coal plants running. That's on top of the plans to weaken rules for monitoring pollution from power plants. For instance, he's targeting the mercury rules and those that regulate coal ash, which is the waste left behind when coal is burned and caused widespread damage in the Tennessee Valley Authority's areas. Trump has also called the IRA the 'Green New Scam.' Trump has also withdrawn from the voluntary Paris Agreement that tries to limit temperature increases to 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit by mid century. 'We're not going to do the wind thing,' Trump told rallygoers. 'Big, ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.' He later wrote on social media, 'After years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants, I am authorizing my Administration to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL.' Have we become immune to this language? The madman theory applies to the idea that foreign foes shouldn't tempt a leader because they are too unpredictable. Trump, though, is driven by vindictiveness and the desire to undo the successes of his predecessors, and not by the greater good. WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 12: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) (L) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) arrive for ... More a news conference with fellow members of the House Progressive Caucus ahead of the vote on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 outside the U.S. Capitol on August 12, 2022 in Washington, DC. Despite not achieving everything the House liberals wanted, the $737 billion act will focus on slowing climate change, lower health care costs, and creating clean energy jobs by enacting a 15% corporate minimum tax, and a 1% fee on stock buybacks, and enhancing IRS enforcement. (Photo by) The real checks and balances might not come from the legislative branch, which seems scared of him, but from American businesses, which might actually have more power than the president. Market powers trump presidential levers. Companies have gone beyond just focusing on shareholders. They now include communities and employees in their mission. This strategy is called the 'triple bottom line,' which considers the planet, people, and profits. Ignoring this can hurt a company's well-being. Cisco, Oracle, and IBM are among the many companies that are leading the sustainability challenge. America's energy picture illustrates the point: Coal has fallen from 50% of the electricity mix in 2008 to 16% today, while renewables keep blossoming, now at 20%. That's a market choice. No U.S. utility company has any plans to build coal-fired power, including the two biggest, American Electric Power and Souther Company, which are trying to ditch their coal plants. Aurora's Swim worries that corporations will reverse their net-zero goals, although that is a gamble—one that could bring lawsuits, lose customers, and damage their brands. That said, listed a series of "backtracking companies:" Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citi Bank, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan pulled out of a industry climate alliance. Meanwhile, Blackrock withdrew from the Net-Zero Asset Managers, and American Airlines removed a reference to its "urgent" climate actions. "Trump is here for four years," says Swim. "There will be a midterm, and political gravity will catch up with his actions. But this administration is willing to inflict economic damage —even incurring a recession—to remake the country into the vision it has.' Witness the tariffs and the whirlwind they have taken this country. "There are strong conservative and economic cases for renewables," she continues. "Supporters must push legislators to say these policies make sense for your state and bring tangible benefits to your community. Maybe their leaders don't care about climate change, but they do care about power outages and recovery costs.' If Trump destroys the IRA, economic fallout could follow. While the president may be bound to the past and blinded to the country's future promise, he knows how to read the political landscape—the best hope of staving off a free fall and even more environmental problems. Renewables Will Best Fossil Fuels Over Time Trump's Energy Agenda And Its Economic Impact
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's EPA is ready to make polluters great again
President Donald Trump has promised to both end scores of federal environmental regulations and ensure America has the 'cleanest air and water on the planet.' The person he tapped to resolve this contradiction, Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin, is now hard at work to make good on half of that promise. It's impossible to see though how granting businesses a new license to pollute and harm vulnerable Americans does anything but ignore the second promise. Instead, it will speed up the clock on the planet — let alone — the country, becoming unlivable. On Tuesday, Zeldin announced in an internal memo that the agency would be shuttering its offices devoted to environmental justice. On Wednesday, the EPA began the process to terminate more than 30 regulations meant to reduce the speed of climate change and keep communities free from pollution. That same day, the agency said it is formally reconsidering what's known as the Endangerment Finding, the underpinning of many of the strongest regulations meant to reduce carbon emissions. These deeply misguided actions could only come from an agency that abhors its own very existence. If carried out, they would accelerate the crisis of climate change and the immiseration of millions of people. And Zeldin's justifications for these actions border on horrific in their deceptive misdirection and grim optimism. The Endangerment Finding, released in 2009, stems from a landmark Supreme Court ruling that held greenhouse gases fit the Clean Air Act's definition of air pollutants, and ordered the EPA to determine whether those gases, in the words of the CAA, 'endanger public health or welfare.' The Endangerment Finding, unsurprisingly, determined exactly that. Ever since, the EPA has been legally required under the CAA to act to limit greenhouse gases. The finding has long been a target of climate deniers, but neither of Trump's EPA chiefs in his first term attempted to rescind it. It shows how much more extreme this administration is that Zeldin and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought seemed gleeful in their statement announcing the formal reconsideration of the finding. In the same breath as he railing against the finding, Zeldin promised to 'follow the science, the law, and common sense wherever it leads.' But the suggestion that a review of 'the science' — which has only grown more certain in the last 16 years — would lead to any alternate finding shows that there is little doubt about how this reconsideration ends. Zeldin similarly deployed his dystopian doublespeak to explain the shuttering of the environmental justice offices, which he framed as a blow against reverse racism. 'President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people,' he said in a statement to The New York Times. 'Part of this mandate includes the elimination of forced discrimination programs.' In a video announcing the deregulatory actions his agency is taking, Zeldin likewise said the Trump administration is 'driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion' in order to 'unleash American energy.' Contrary to what Zeldin claims, environmental justice programs are in no way about 'forced discrimination.' The programs he's ending targeted pollution that has affected marginalized people disproportionately, like those who live near the busy highways that were often built right through minority communities. Efforts to ensure that the people who can't afford to move away from their home next to a power plant have fewer harmful chemicals raining down onto them are only 'discriminating' if we're defining discrimination as 'when money is spent on brown people instead of white people.' Zeldin's rationales are the same twisted logic being propounded across the Trump administration, such as when the Education Department claims that the Civil Rights Act prevents schools providing scholarships to address racial disparities. When applied to the environmental regulations that are now under attack, it means that the EPA is now trying to make it easier for coal-fired power plants to again pump more waste into water sources and mercury into the air. In a pre-emptive rebuttal to critics, Zeldin wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday that the EPA remains committed 'safeguarding health and the environment.' The difference from past administrations, he argued, is that it will do so 'through partnership rather than prescriptive bureaucracy, through collaboration rather than regulation.' In other words, the plan is to rely on businesses to decide when they're doing too much damage to the environment and agree with whatever decision they reach. The level of cooperation that Zeldin's strategy calls for relies on unprecedented altruism on the part of business and either extreme naivete or gross negligence on the part of government. It implies that major corporations can be inherently trusted to act in the interest of the greater good rather than their profits. But such an argument totally ignores decades of environmental history, impact studies and case law. If Zeldin is not ignorant, he must then simply be neglectful, opening the floodgates to poison America's communities with little care for what happens next. This article was originally published on
Axios
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Axios
EPA's "swing for the fences" attempt to redo climate policy
On a day featuring a blitz of environmental regulatory actions, the EPA on Wednesday announced two particularly sweeping climate change moves. Why it matters: The moves reveal the administration's strategy to "revisit" or "revise" both the social cost of carbon as well as the 16-year-old endangerment finding. The social cost of carbon — which puts a price on each ton of climate pollution — is a metric helping shape government regulations, making how it is set extremely influential. The endangerment finding serves as the scientific justification for regulating greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Driving the news: The EPA announcement shows that the Trump administration intends to either rescind or modify the endangerment finding by bringing in new considerations and calling upon multiple agencies to contribute to the effort. These include the cost of regulations flowing from the finding itself down to the level of automobiles and factories, rather than by directly attacking the science. Challenging the science would be fraught, given the absence of any new research that has called into doubt the reality and severity of human-caused climate change. Instead, the science has pointed to increasingly obvious and severe present–day and forthcoming climate damages. The finding — issued in the wake of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling — held that six greenhouse gases endanger "both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations." Democrats further defined planet-warming emissions as air pollutants under federal law in the Inflation Reduction Act. What they're saying: The administration appears to seek "to either rescind or modify the endangerment finding using a new approach with the apparent goal of disabling EPA from regulating greenhouse gas pollution, even though the Supreme Court has already upheld the agency's legal authority to do so," Harvard University law professor Jody Freeman said in an email to Axios. "It's a very aggressive, swing for the fences-sounding announcement, meant to send a political message, which is, we don't care about climate change," she said. Between the lines: The approach will also encompass a review of "all of its prior regulations and actions that rely on the Endangerment Finding," the agency said. "EPA's regulation of the climate affects the entire national economy — jobs, wages, and family budgets. It's long overdue to look at the impacts on our people of the underlying Obama endangerment finding," Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said in a statement. The EPA's announcement zeroed in on what the agency says were flaws in how the finding has been used for regulatory purposes. "When EPA made the Endangerment Finding in 2009, the agency did not consider any aspect of the regulations that would flow from it," it said in a statement. The big picture: The EPA plans to tap into expertise at OMB, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies as part of its review, the agency said. The intrigue: When it comes to the social cost of carbon, EPA said it's revising that calculation, too. Technically, the social cost of carbon is a dollar estimate of the damages caused by emitting one additional metric ton of greenhouse gases into the air. Over the years, each administration has raised and lowered the number, but this goes further than merely setting it at a level and could reshape it for future administrations as well. Republicans have long criticized the metric, and Trump set it at $1 during his first term. "The Biden-Harris administration's so-called 'social cost of carbon' measurement was used to advance their climate agenda in a way that imposed major costs," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. "To Power the Great American Comeback, we are fully committed to removing regulations holding back the U.S." House Republicans have sought to add riders to spending bills that would ban virtually any use of the social cost of carbon and other greenhouse gases. A bill in the last Congress sponsored by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the RESTART Act, would prohibit any social cost estimate that raises energy costs or prolongs agency actions. What's next: Lawsuits, and lots of them, to try to stop the EPA's new climate actions. Go deeper: Trump plan to gut science behind EPA climate rules faces long odds, experts say
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump Is Leading an ‘All-Out Assault' on the Climate
It's no secret that Donald Trump has zero interest in fighting climate change and enthusiastically supports the fossil fuel industry. Trump's 2024 victory was expected to set the climate fight back, but in less than two months, his administration has already done irreparable harm to efforts to address climate change. This can primarily be seen in key agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For example, the EPA is currently working on rewriting its finding from 2009 that has been critical for regulating greenhouse gases. This was initiated by an executive order Trump issued on his first day in office. The so-called 'Endangerment Finding,' which has been unsuccessfully challenged in court multiple times, says that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. It allows the EPA, under the Clean Air Act, to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. If the finding were to be watered down or essentially done away with, that would largely take the EPA out of the climate fight. 'Revisiting and potentially reversing the Endangerment Finding could be the most drastic step that the Trump Administration will take on climate,' says Barry Rabe, a professor emeritus of environmental policy at the University of Michigan. 'It would upend a consensus running across prior presidencies and the courts, underpinning a range of domestic policy steps and global ones.' Michael Gerrard, a climate law professor at Columbia University, tells Rolling Stone that rewriting the Endangerment Finding would mean that the EPA would no longer be able to regulate emissions from power plants or motor vehicles. He says the finding is the 'legal basis for most of what the EPA does under the Clean Air Act to regulate climate change.' At the NOAA, the Trump administration is firing hundreds of workers and looks intent on closing some of its most important offices. The NOAA does critical work on climate science and weather monitoring, which is needed when extreme weather events hit. Its weather forecasting models are also what power everyone's weather apps, so the private sector can't just easily step in and pick up the slack. Gerrard says the agency is being 'decimated' with these firings. 'He's undermining the science at NOAA — weather forecasting, climate modeling, etc. — by just cutting staff,' says Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at UCLA. Beyond what's happening with the Endangerment Finding and staff cuts at agencies, Carlson says there are multiple other actions the administration has taken that threaten efforts to address climate change and will have ripple effects for the foreseeable future. 'Lee Zeldin is trying to weaponize the [Justice Department] against nonprofits that have received climate funding,' says Carlson. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has frozen over $20 billion in funds from President Biden's landmark climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, that were meant to go to nonprofits focused on climate change. Trump falsely claimed during his recent joint address to Congress that former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams received almost $2 billion from this fund. Zeldin says he is working with the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate potential fraud — though no evidence of fraud has been provided. It's thought that this is actually simply a way to 'claw back' those funds so they can be used for other purposes. A senior federal prosecutor — working for Trump's interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, who's described his team as 'President Trump's lawyers' — has already reportedly resigned over a demand she help freeze the assets of an EPA grant initiative when there was not, she wrote, 'sufficient evidence' to do so. Regarding the Inflation Reduction Act, Carlson says she worries the administration will repeal other parts of the signature climate law. You might think electric vehicles would be safe thanks to the presence of co-president Elon Musk, but Trump still doesn't have any love for EVs beyond those produced by Tesla. 'Trump has made it no secret that he wants to revoke the electric vehicle tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act and maybe other provisions,' Carlson says. 'If he does that, that will dramatically undermine the effort to decarbonize.' Elon Musk has previously claimed, on different occasions, that eliminating the tax credit could help Tesla. It's thought that eliminating it would hurt other car companies significantly more than Tesla, which means it could be a net benefit for the company. The transportation sector is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the U.S., so hobbling the adoption of electric vehicles would have a substantial impact on climate efforts. It may also cause car companies to reconsider their focus on rolling out more EVs if consumer interest decreases. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy published a memo shortly after he was confirmed by the Senate focused on the possibility of rolling back fuel economy standards for motor vehicles, which would do further harm to the climate. The Trump administration has also canceled efforts to repair broken electric vehicle chargers around the country. The Department of Energy is now going after appliance energy efficiency standards, which would make sure home appliances use less energy. 'It's an all-out assault on the federal government being involved in tackling climate change,' says Carlson. There are many more examples that could be listed, but the consensus seems to be that the Trump administration is doing everything it can to make climate change worse and make Americans reliant on dirty energy for years to come. That's not exactly surprising, considering the fact he told the fossil fuel industry during the election that he'd do basically whatever they wanted if they gave him $1 billion. All of this is happening despite the fact that renewable energy is now generally cheaper than energy derived from fossil fuels. That being said, the federal government isn't the only space where we see the climate fight taking place, and some level of climate action will continue within the United States during Trump's term. Carrie Jenks, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School, says a federal response to climate change can't be replaced. However, she says all is not lost if the federal government isn't doing what it should be doing to address this crisis. 'In the absence of federal involvement, I think you'll still see states and the industry moving forward to address climate change and make investments,' says Jenks. 'I think there's an opportunity for states to continue to make progress and to test things out.' The catastrophic effects of climate change are becoming more apparent every year, and the world doesn't have infinite time to win this fight. While Trump remains in office, the federal government will certainly be working against efforts to solve this immense problem. Perhaps other western nations will step up as the U.S. falters. More from Rolling Stone Mass Layoffs at the Veterans Administration to Begin in June: Report ICE Arrests Palestinian Student Activist Who Helped Lead Columbia University Protests Trump Doubles Down on Lie, Says Government Funded 'Transgender Surgery on Mice' Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Euronews
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
This key scientific finding underpins US climate action. Now Trump is being urged to ignore it
As President Trump's attack on the climate continues, the US is considering repealing an important scientific finding that underpins the country's climate action. According to the Washington Post, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin has urged the White House to strike down the 2009 'Endangerment Finding.' This finding determines that greenhouse gas emissions are a risk to public health, and gives the EPA a legal foundation for regulations to limit planet-warming pollution. Why does the EPA want to repeal this key climate finding? On day one of Trump's second presidency, he signed a slew of executive orders. This included EO 14154, also known as 'Unleashing American Energy.' Buried in the 20-page document is an instruction to the EPA Administrator which tasked him with reviewing the 'legality and continuing applicability of' the Endangerment Finding. It gave Zeldin 30 days to submit recommendations to the head of the White House budget office, Russell Vought. The executive order effectively asked the EPA and other agencies to determine whether climate change is a hoax, as Trump has claimed many times in the past. A month on, Administrator Zeldin appears to have made his decision. 'I challenged Lee Zeldin to his face on the endangerment finding,' Senator Ed Markey posted on social media. 'I knew he wouldn't stand up to Trump's fossil fuel donors. If this admin wants to say that climate-fueled hurricanes, wildfires and droughts aren't a danger to our country, the admin itself is a danger to our country.' In the wake of the planet's hottest year on record and multiple climate-related disasters in the US, there is almost certainly going to be some opposition to this move. According to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), in 2024 there were 27 individual weather and climate disasters in the US, causing at least $1 billion in damages. These disasters, it says, were responsible for at least 568 fatalities and cost the US $182.7 billion. 'Targeting the Endangerment Finding is extreme, dangerous, and puts important benefits at risk,' says Peter Zalzal, special projects director and lead attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund. 'It also goes well beyond anything the first Trump administration undertook.' What is the Endangerment Finding? In 2007, the US Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the country's Clean Air Act. It asked the EPA to make a science-based decision on whether they were a danger to public health. Two years later, the EPA issued the Endangerment Finding, which read: 'The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.' This finding has formed the bedrock of the Clean Air Act and 15 years of greenhouse gas reduction in the US. Under this act, the EPA is legally obliged to limit the emissions of any air pollutant that may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. The finding is backed by a vast amount of scientific data and evidence that climate pollution harms human health. It has been reaffirmed in the US Supreme Court multiple times and provides the foundation for the EPA to protect people from climate-changing pollution. Since it was established, the scientific evidence has only become stronger. National Climate Assessments conducted in 2018 and 2023 confirmed that climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions causes extensive harm throughout the country. 'It's no surprise that this anti-science, pro-fossil fuel administration wants to go after the Endangerment Finding,' says Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'This blatant attempt to do an end-run around scientific evidence deserves to fail.' Can President Trump dismantle the Endangerment Finding? Dismantling the Endangerment Finding will be difficult but not impossible. The wealth of scientific evidence on which the finding is based would need to be discredited, and robust, compelling evidence to the contrary presented. Given the overwhelming consensus on climate change and its risks, discrediting this key ruling with science will be a near-impossible task. Beyond that, the EPA would need to go through a lengthy rulemaking process, including public comments, reviews, and legal justifications, which could take years. Rather than directly dismantling the Endangerment Finding, the Trump administration may decide to take a more indirect approach to weakening laws about air pollution. The EPA could be instructed, for example, to interpret the finding in such a way that it minimises regulatory burden. There is a precedent for this. During Trump's first term, he weakened the Endangerment Finding by instructing the EPA to roll back regulations based on it. This meant the finding was never directly repealed, but became ineffective in regulatory terms. In practice, this saw a reinterpretation of the EPA's regulatory authority, allowing the administration to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan with the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. This new rule significantly reduced federal restrictions on coal power plants. Now, with a key piece of scientific evidence at risk, it seems the White House is once again weighing how far it is willing to go to attack the foundational science that underpins climate action in the US. If the Endangerment Rule is weakened or repealed, it could open the floodgates to an array of climate-damaging activities.
