How the EPA Chief Could Gut the Agency’s Climate Change Regulations

The Hill, 12 March 2017

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is fueling speculation that he could try to repeal the lynchpin of the federal government’s climate change regulations.  In an interview Thursday with CNBC, Scott Pruitt cast doubt on his own agency’s 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases ‘endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.’  The so-called endangerment finding was the backbone of the Obama administration’s climate change regulations.

Under Obama, the EPA argued that the 2009 finding compelled it to issue greenhouse gas emissions limits for sectors like cars, trucks and power plants.  But as Pruitt and President Trump look to unwind Obama’s major climate policies, the endangerment finding might be imperiled.

‘You know what’s interesting about the situation with CO2, Joe, is we’ve had a Supreme Court decision in 2007 and then the endangerment finding that you’re making reference to in 2009,’ Pruitt told CNBC host Joe Kernan, referring to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision when the court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and the EPA has to determine whether they should be regulated.

‘Nowhere in the continuum, nowhere in the equation, has Congress spoken.  The legislative branch has not addressed this issue at all,’ Pruitt said.  ‘The decision in 2007 was not that the EPA had to regulate.  The decision in 2007 was they needed to make a decision.’