Donald Trump has never been one to let facts get in his way. Calling climate change “a hoax,” he sought a billion dollars in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to make good on his promises to jettison climate regulations.
Standing in his way is the 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding, a meticulously researched multi-year scientific effort which clearly confirmed that six greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)) are impacting the climate. Those impacts, in the form of more severe storms, warming and rising seas, and a host of other deadly and destructive phenomena, have been found to clearly constitute a threat to public health and welfare.
This Endangerment Finding is of critical importance because it serves as the factual basis (and therefore legal basis) for Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that aim to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. For example, the Finding allowed EPA to strengthen fuel economy standards for cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act. It has also been the basis for EPA requirements to reduce GHG emissions at power plants and from oil and gas operations. Together these sectors account for a majority of U.S. GHG emissions.
It is not a surprise that the Finding has been a top target of affected industries. Fortunately, over the ensuing 16 years, legal challenges to the Endangerment Finding funded by the fossil fuel industry have all failed.
Unlike his first term where he was ridiculed for clumsily trying to bury reports on climate change, this time around, Trump is grabbing the bull by the horns and proposing to rescind the Endangerment Finding altogether. His plan for doing so is characteristically both rash and outlandish.
Rather than asking EPA scientists to review what had previously been done, Trump had his Energy Secretary convene a group of five known climate skeptics – two scientists from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, one from Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution, another from Georgia Tech, and a Canadian economist. They were given two months to write the report, with its conclusions decided in advance.
The resulting Department of Energy (DOE) report, a 141-page review, reads exactly as what one might have expected. Also, unsurprisingly, the critiques have been devastating. For example, a coalition of over 85 scientists, including several whose work is cited in the DOE report, issued their own 459-page document concluding that the DOE report is fundamentally incorrect, relying on cherry-picked data and misquoting their peer-reviewed research. Critics note that:
- The DOE report flat out misstated several known effects of and facts about human-induced warming, understating data which showed increasing heat-wave intensity, frequency, and duration; hurricanes becoming more powerful; sea-level rise increasingly endangering coastal communities; and wildfire seasons growing longer and contributing to more devastating blazes.
- The DOE report is based on rough calculations from previous modeling but the authors did not do any modeling of their own to verify the results of their extrapolations.
- The DOE report does not even address the costs or consequences of the adaptation that will be required throughout the country or what real, fundamental adaptation would look like.
- The report underestimates both the public health costs associated with higher temperatures, and bigger wildfires and storms, and largely ignores the public health benefits from reduced pollution flowing from climate regulation.
The DOE report also tries to make the case for the benefits of climate change. Here is one of its sweeping claims:
“Elevated concentrations of CO2 directly enhance plant growth, globally contributing to ‘greening’ the planet and increasing agricultural productivity.”
Apart from whether the net benefits to agriculture are outweighed by the loss of crops through climate-induced wildfires, floods, and droughts, this is equivalent to arguing that the flooding of coastal cities is beneficial because it increases water-skiing opportunities.
After DOE issued this report, it received more than 2,300 public comments, mainly negative and some with detailed critiques, by its September 2, 2025 deadline. The comment period rescission came after EPA had already adopted the report, without any changes or corrections, to support its reversal of the Endangerment Finding. Public comments on EPA’s proposed rescission of the Endangerment Finding are due by September 22, 2025.
Unfortunately, it seems the die is already cast, as EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has already been trumpeting the removal of the Endangerment Finding as part of his self-proclaimed “biggest deregulation in American history.”
Environmental groups have already filed suit to challenge the basis for rescission of the Endangerment Finding. Ironically, the environmentalists’ litigation could ultimately be aided by the Supreme Court decision to overturn the Chevron doctrine, under which a court must defer to a reasonable agency interpretation of an ambiguous statute. Without the benefit of judicial deference, EPA could potentially have an even harder time establishing that it has a good reason to ignore a finding that is strongly supported by evidence.
Yet, the process of challenging a final EPA decision in federal court will undoubtedly be lengthy. Coupled with other Trump Administration actions to undermine the transition to clean energy, a final decision on the Endangerment Finding may be too late to stem increased GHG emissions and avoid passing dangerous climate tipping points.
Only a change in our political dynamics will be enough to stem this impending planetary crisis.
Laurie Williams recently retired after 35 years as an attorney at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Williams is a consultant on climate policy for PEER.
