The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced it plans to revoke a scientific finding on climate change that has served as the basis for key environmental and pollution regulations.
In an interview on Tuesday, Lee Zeldin, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA, said that the agency would nix the 2009 “endangerment finding” that links emissions from motor vehicles to climate change and negative health impacts.
Zeldin added that those who seek to reduce carbon emissions only highlight the negative effects.
“With regard to the endangerment finding, they’ll say carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that’s the end of it. They’ll never acknowledge any type of benefit or need for carbon dioxide,” Zeldin told a right-wing podcast, Ruthless.
“It’s important to note, and they don’t, how important it is for the planet.”
The “endangerment finding” has been central to the justifications for regulating greenhouse gas emissions, including through vehicle emissions standards.
The finding, issued under Democratic President Barack Obama, has become a frequent target of conservative lawmakers and fossil fuel companies, which have sought its repeal.
Nevertheless, the “endangerment finding” has withstood several legal challenges in court.
Its revocation would be a continuation of the Trump administration’s push to roll back environmental protections and slash regulations in the name of boosting the economy.
The news agency Reuters reported last week that the EPA is also planning to scrap all greenhouse gas emissions standards on light-duty, medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles.
In Tuesday’s interview, Zeldin likewise positioned the repeal of the “endangerment finding” as a boon to business.
“There are people who, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country,” Zeldin said.
“They created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence, in many cases, a lot of segments of our economy.”
Zeldin also touted the finding’s revocation as the “largest deregulatory action” in US history — and a potentially fatal blow to efforts to curb climate change.
“This has been referred to as basically driving a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion,” Zeldin said.
A 2021 study from Harvard University’s TH Chan School of Public Health found that a decrease in vehicle emissions helped bring the number of yearly deaths attributed to air pollution down from 27,700 in 2008 to 19,800 in 2017.
The researchers credited that decline to a combination of federal regulations and technological improvements.
They also noted that, if emissions had remained at the 2008 levels, the number of deaths would have instead risen to 48,200 by 2017.
Supporters consider air pollution regulations to be a vital part of the effort to slow climate change and minimise adverse health effects.
Trump, however, has defied scientific consensus on climate change and referred to it as a “hoax”.
Instead, he has pushed for the US to ramp up fossil fuel production, considered the primary contributor to climate change.
Earlier this month, his energy secretary, Chris Wright, wrote a column for The Economist magazine arguing that climate change is “not an existential crisis” but a “byproduct of progress”.
“I am willing to take the modest negative trade-off for this legacy of human advancement,” Wright wrote.
The United Nations has estimated that, between 2030 and 2050, climate change would contribute to 250,000 additional deaths per year, from issues related to tropical diseases like malaria, heat stress and food security.
