By Mary O’KEEFE

“Alongside President Trump in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. In this final rule, EPA is saving American taxpayers over $1.3 trillion, eliminating both the Obama-era 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding and all subsequent federal GHG emission standards for all vehicles and engines of model years 2012 to 2027 and beyond,” according to a Feb. 12 White House statement.

Yep, we will now be saving lots of money because large companies will not have to deal with those pesky greenhouse gas laws.

As you can imagine there has been quite a bit of response from climate scientists to this announcement by the administration. 

According to the EPA, greenhouse gases are not air pollutants and therefore cannot be regulated by the EPA. 

This ends the “endangerment finding.” 

“Let’s break down what the endangerment finding is and why it matters. In 2009, after years of extensive scientific review, EPA officially determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. This ‘endangerment finding,’ as it’s known, was based on overwhelming evidence from EPA’s own experts, the U.S. National Academics of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the scientific community that shows that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, from extracting and burning fossil fuels, drive global climate change and harm people. The finding was legally critical. Under the U.S. Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to regulate substances that ‘cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.’ Once the EPA made that determination for greenhouse gases, the agency was legally obligated to act. The finding became the legal foundation for federal climate policy, including regulating vehicle, industrial and power plant emissions and treating climate change as a public health issue under the EPA’s authority,” according to World Resources Institute. 

The endangerment finding was a reaction to a Supreme Court decision that found the U.S. 1963 Clean Air Act required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. 

Basically the February decision by the EPA allows auto makers free rein to build models without considering greenhouse gas emissions. 

So, this is bad for the Earth. Greenhouse gases are not a myth – they are facts. We can actually see gases escaping from vehicles’ tailpipes. 

This is an absolute shakeup in climate protection and is also shaping up for yet another legal battle between the EPA and Earth protectors. 

Under the law and regulations prior to the Feb. 12 announcement, the views of the EPA and the administration were that states could not set their own emission regulations; however, this new decision takes the emission regulations out of the federal government’s hands and may allow states to set their own emission rules. That could be helpful to states like California.

The Trump administration apparently feel this cancellation of the endangerment finding does not affect the federal authority to set the standards. However, this is all now being reviewed by lawyers and if the Supreme Court votes to overturn its 2007 decision affirms the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases. 

As of press time there was a large coalition of health and environmental organizations that filed a legal challenge in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to the EPA’s decision. The case was brought by groups including the American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, Alliance of Nurses for a Healthy Environment and Physicians for Social Responsibility, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund and Sierra Club. 

But what really is confusing is the EPA itself. On its website, dated March 31, 2025, 

[https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions] as of press time it stated: “Greenhouse gases trap heat and make the planet warmer. Human activities are responsible for almost all of the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the last 150 years. The largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in the United States is from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation.

“EPA tracks total U.S. emissions by publishing the Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Emissions and Sinks. This annual report estimates the total national greenhouse gas emissions and removals associated with human activities across the United States by source, gas and economic sector.

“Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation primarily comes from burning fossil fuel for cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes. Over 94% of the fuel used for transportation is petroleum based, which primarily includes gasoline and diesel and results in direct emissions. The transportation sector is the largest source of direct greenhouse gas emissions and second largest source when indirect emissions from electricity end-use are allocated across sectors. The transportation sector is an end-use sector for electricity but currently represents a relatively low percentage of total electricity use. Indirect emissions from electricity are less than 1% of direct emissions.”

And then it has data on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which in 2022 was 6,343 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents which increased 1% from the previous year.

So what the EPA’s own website states as a concern is apparently no longer a concern on another of the EPA’s pages. 

Rain is expected to continue to fall today into tomorrow bringing about 1/4 of an inch of rain and another six to 12 inches of snow to our mountains. There is expected to be more gusty winds, from 30 to 50 mph. It should be a drier weekend with more “unsettled weather” with light to moderate rainfall next week. It will continue to be on the chilly side with highs in the mid 60s/low 70s. The latest rainstorm brought about two inches of rain to our area, according to NOAA.