W. Last Week's Proposed Changes, The EPA Is Eliminating Its Powers To Regulate Pollution And To Protect Human Health
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Instead, his EPA is going much farther, attempting to eliminate its own power to govern pollution. The agency is soon expected to release its final proposal to repeal the landmark “endangerment finding,” an Obama-era rule that gave it the authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that warm the earth; at the same time, it will also repeal its rule limiting automotive carbon emissions. The agency also confirmed this week that it will no longer quantify the human health benefits of regulating industrial pollution, a change that could justify far more lenient oversight of toxic emissions from things like smokestacks and power plants. Administrator Lee Zeldin hits the road today for a “Freedom Means Affordable Cars” tour in Michigan and Ohio, during which he will tout Trump’s efforts to relax environmental rules on gas cars.
These changes are the latest in a battery of repeals that cover everything from mercury to microplastics, but they go much farther than simply cutting industry a break. If the changes hold up in court, experts and former agency officials say they could amount to a backdoor repeal of the EPA itself. The agency would still have funding and staff, these experts say, but it would no longer be able to perform its mission of protecting what the Clean Air Act calls “public health and welfare.”
“Any erosion of the purpose of these laws, which was to protect public health, is … undermining the very purpose of environmental protection,” said Bob Perciasepe, who served as an assistant administrator of the EPA for air and water quality under President Bill Clinton.
The agency is pairing its proposed repeal of the 2009 “endangerment finding” with a repeal of its rules limiting carbon pollution from gas cars. Its rule proposing these repeals makes two distinct arguments against past regulations on tailpipe carbon. The first is that the EPA lacks the authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide, because global warming is a worldwide issue, not a “local and regional” one like soot. The second echoes Trump’s criticism of strict Biden-era tailpipe rules. Biden’s regulations would have spurred a faster transition to electric vehicles, but Trump has claimed they amounted to a ban on internal combustion cars. The proposed rule argues that that “no technology … is capable of preventing or controlling” carbon emissions from cars except for “a complete change from internal combustion engines to EVs.” It also claims that regulating the pollutant often “requires manufacturers to design and install new and more expensive technologies, thereby increasing the price of new vehicles” and hurting consumers. (It adds that “the ability to own a vehicle is an important means to unlock economic freedom and participate in society.”)
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https://grist.org/politics/trump-lee-zeldin-epa-endangerment-finding-emissions-human-health/