The EPA cited the report in announcing its intention to rescind the endangerment finding last year, but those citations were not part of the final rule.
Instead, the EPA argued that the Clean Air Act “does not authorize the Agency to prescribe emission standards in response to global climate change concerns,” despite the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA that the agency does have that authority.
In its rule issued Thursday, EPA stated that the “legal interpretation finalized in this action means that we cannot resolve remaining scientific controversies in this regulatory context.”
More than a dozen health and environmental justice non-profits have sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over its revocation of the legal determination that underpins US federal climate regulations.
Filed in Washington DC circuit court, the lawsuit challenges the EPA’s rollback of the “endangerment finding”, which states that the buildup of heat-trapping pollution in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare and has allowed the EPA to limit those emissions from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources since 2009. The rollback was widely seen as a major setback to US efforts to combat the climate crisis.
The suit was brought by the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and 11 other public health and environmental organizations. The lawsuit was filed by green legal organizations Clean Air Task Force and Earthjustice and it names the EPA and the agency’s administrator, Lee Zeldin, as defendants.
“EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding and safeguards to limit vehicle emissions marks a complete dereliction of the agency’s mission to protect people’s health and its legal obligation under the Clean Air Act,” said Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO at the Union of Concerned Scientists, another one of the groups behind the lawsuit. “This shameful and dangerous action by the Trump administration and EPA administrator Zeldin is rooted in falsehoods, not facts, and is at complete odds with the public interest and the best available science.”
Dr Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, noted on a press call on Thursday that the endangerment finding had been repeatedly upheld amid previous challenges.
“EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas has already been confirmed by the supreme court nearly two decades ago and has constantly been reaffirmed by the courts,” he said. “The science is clear here. The endangerment findings [are] based on decades of scientific consensus that climate change is real.”