Experts weighed in on the government's recent "repeal" of a landmark Environmental Protection Agency finding, according to Grist, warning of myriad "unintended consequences."
What's happening?
During a July visit to an Indianapolis auto dealership, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced the Agency's intent to revoke its "Endangerment Finding."
Massachusetts v. EPA, a 2007 Supreme Court case, led the justices to order the EPA to clarify whether greenhouse gases constituted actionable air pollution under the Clean Air Act.
The judges instructed the EPA to make a determination based on scientific data instead of policy preferences, and the EPA's Endangerment Finding was the result. It established that six distinct greenhouse gases posed a threat to public health and safety.
The Endangerment Finding served as the bedrock of federal environmental regulation, but on Feb. 12, the EPA "repealed" it. Although the move was more accurately called a "rescission," as scientific findings cannot be repealed, the rule was officially neutralized.
On the day the EPA moved to strike the finding, a judge ruled that the Agency violated federal law by convening a secret panel of cherry-picked researchers to produce data in support of that policy decision, but the resulting report was not stricken from the record.
In a press release, the EPA boasted of the "single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history," and claimed, without evidence, that it would "save Americans over $1.3 trillion."
Why is this concerning?
In the lead-up to the nullification of the Endangerment Finding and in its press release, the EPA maintained that the rule was costly and flatly disputed the global scientific consensus on the known causes of climate change.
The government touted the purported cost burden of regulating planet-warming pollution, but experts from diverse backgrounds told Grist that revoking the Endangerment Finding would "open a Pandora's box of complications" for industry.
As the outlet noted, the Endangerment Finding protected fossil fuel companies from lawsuits over environmental damage, and the rule's rescission could "shatter that shield."
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$200 or more 💰 Grist explained that the EPA sought to establish a lack of authority to regulate pollution while asserting authority to constrain states from doing so, which former Department of Justice environmental lawyer Amanda Lineberry called a "delicate needle to thread."
Hana Vizcarra, a lawyer for Earthjustice, pointed out that oil and gas companies weren't "clamoring" for deregulation for good reason, such as the individual lawsuits that could result.
"It's going to be chaotic," Vizcarra cautioned.
What's being done about it?
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists held that the revocation of the Endangerment Finding was "scientifically unfounded, almost certainly illegal, and unbelievably unwise."
On Feb. 18, the New York Times reported that a coalition of 17 public health, environmental, and science groups had filed the first lawsuit demanding a review of the rescission, with other groups and individual states expected to mount separate legal challenges.
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