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The Trump administration is preparing to repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has called the move “the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” saying the final rule, expected this week, will remove requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum framed the repeal as part of the Trump administration's effort to boost the failing coal industry. “More energy drives human flourishing,” Burgum told the Wall Street Journal, arguing that “energy abundance is the thing that we have to focus on, not regulating certain forms of energy out.”
On Wednesday, President Trump is expected to sign an executive order instructing the Defense department to buy electricity from coal-fired power plants as the president is awarded a new “Undisputed Champion of Coal” award by a pro-coal lobbying group.
Myron Ebell, who has been leading attacks on climate science for decades, told the New York Times, “We are pretty close to total victory.” Ebell credited four people in particular for executing the Trump administration's plan for erasing the endangerment finding, even though the fossil fuel industry has broadly accepted climate science and prefers regulatory certainty.
Documents obtained by Fieldnotes show a $2 million pitch in 2022 to fund a campaign to kill the endangerment finding, operating in secret “to prevent media and other conflicted sources from shaming participants and undercutting the work before it is done.”
Freedom 250 in the spotlight
President Donald Trump's Freedom 250 project, which is selling access to the president for $1 million and up, will be the focus of a House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing this morning. The American Prospect reports that an events guide produced by Freedom 250 encourages partners to elevate Christian nationalist talking points and hold prayer breakfasts where pastors pair biblical readings with quotes from the Founding Fathers. The hearing begins at 8:15 am Mountain Time and will be streamed online.
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It’s not the corporate interests. It’s the pure ideological activists who believe that climate change is a hoax, who believe that this was about transferring wealth and driving socialism and destroying renewable energy and promoting left-wing ideology.”
