The E.P.A.’s Disastrous Plan to End the Regulation of Greenhouse Gases

With a new proposal, the Trump Administration, which has already laid waste to dozens of programs aimed at limiting climate change, has managed to outdo itself.

Nineteen years ago, toward the end of the George W. Bush Administration, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear a case prompted by government inaction on climate change. The plaintiffs in the case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, argued that the Clean Air Act compelled the E.P.A. to determine whether greenhouse-gas emissions constituted a threat to the public, and, if so, to regulate them. The Court, in a 5–4 ruling, essentially agreed. Richard J. Lazarus, a Harvard Law School professor who wrote a book about the decision, has called it “the most important environmental law case ever decided by the Court.” The ruling gave rise, in 2009, to what’s known as the “endangerment finding,” which has formed the basis of federal limits on carbon pollution ever since.

Now the Trump Administration wants to overturn the Court’s decision, or perhaps just violate it. Last week, it announced a plan to revoke the endangerment finding. In concert with congressional Republicans, the White House has already laid waste to dozens of programs aimed at limiting climate change. These include fees on methane leaks, tax credits for clean-energy development, and grants to states to install electric-vehicle charging stations. (Recently, a federal district judge in Seattle ordered the disbursement of the charging-station grants awarded to several states, though it’s unclear whether the money has been released.) Still, in taking on the endangerment finding, the Administration has managed to outdo itself.

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