The Trump Administration has decided to cancel the scientific and legal foundation of all climate policies since the Obama era, known as the endangerment finding. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt justified the move by claiming it is "the biggest deregulatory action in American history."
Prominent climate activists and political leaders protested this week outside the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denouncing the biggest environmental "sabotage" in American soil history, which will allow, among other things, lifting limits on vehicle-produced greenhouse gas emissions. The decision was made public weeks after the United States withdrew from the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"We are facing old-style dirty political corruption," denounced Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. "The Environmental Protection Agency is so infiltrated by the fossil fuel industry that it has turned its role around and become a weapon of the government in the hands of major polluters."
Several activists from the Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) announced on the spot their intention to challenge the measure in court, citing public health and environmental protection. "We are going to take legal action, and we are going to win," predicted Manish Bapna, head of the NRDC.
"The science that determined the damage to human and planetary health from greenhouse gas emissions was evident in 2009 and is even more so now," warned Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "The EPA has a legal obligation to regulate emissions. Americans deserve a Government that addresses the challenge of the climate crisis with proven solutions, not by becoming an agent of destruction and benefiting the fossil fuel industry."
Since his speech at the last UN General Assembly in September, where he referred to climate change as "the greatest hoax of the century," Donald Trump has redoubled his efforts to reverse all climate policies of the past two decades. His Administration has stated that the "deregulation" announced this week will serve to boost the economy, lower energy prices, and save Americans the equivalent of $1.3 trillion (although it has not been explained how these calculations were made).
An EPA spokesperson confirmed that the agency will no longer have the authority to set vehicle emissions after the cancellation of the 2009 scientific and legal foundation. The same spokesperson accused the Obama and Biden administrations of using the endangerment finding to justify spending billions of dollars on regulations for new vehicles.