Can the EPA Rescind the Endangerment Finding? Should It Even Try?

A recent Federalist Society webinar on one of the Trump EPA"s top agenda items.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced that the agency will reconsider the so-called endangerment finding, which triggers the regulation of greenhouse gases under various provisions of the Clean Air Act. For reasons I explained in this post, I believe this is a fool's errand, no matter what one thinks about the threat posed by climate change or the utility of federal regulation.

On Friday, I participated in a webinar discussing the legal and practical issues concerning an attempted rescission of the endangerment finding with regulatory analyst Richard Belzer and attorney Michael Buschbacher of Boyden Gray.  The program was moderated by Laura Stanley of Gibson Dunn. The webinar was sponsored by the Regulatory Transparency Project of the Federalist Society and is viewable below.

Comments

[Riva]

Can the EPA rescind the Endangerment Finding? Absolutely. Should it? What? Should they rescind the foundational basis for restricting /suppressing fossil fuels in the pursuit of an irresponsible and unworkable climate change agenda? Yes. Hell yes. Absolutely hell yes.

[Speaking for normal people]

C'mon,Riva, you know Jonathan wants to argue this theoretically 🙂

[Kazinski]

If they don't rescind the endangerment finding for CO2 they should be required to issue an endangerment finding for water vapor, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than either CO2 or methane, and there are lots of human activities that release water vapor.

[MollyGodiva]

Excess water in the air comes out as rain or snow and does not stick around.

[Kazinski]

CO2 doesn't stick around either. There is an entire carbon cycle which is essential to life on earth, its a scientific fact that the carbon cycle is more efficient at sequestering carbon than it is at recycling it which is why we have entire mountain ranges made from Calcium Carbonate. In terms of geologic time current CO2 levels are very low.

[Speaking for normal people]

Then in what sense is it excess ???? In fact , how could you tell that something was excess water.

I can't tell you beforehand who is the fittest, but check with me later because whatever survives is the fittest. PURE TAUTOLOGY

[Longtobefree]

I think the rule is republican administrations can never reverse anything done by a democrat administration.
But anything done by a republican administration expires at the next election.
Something like that, based on nationwide rulings by district judges.

[y81]

I think the rule is that a Republican administration could rescind the endangerment finding, but it would take a lot of careful, patient work to build a record that would hold up in court, and the Trump administration doesn't do that. The place is not exactly stocked with T14 grads. Anyway, Trump's base doesn't care much about results: unsuccessful bluster lets them feel oppressed, which is what they really want.