Is This the End of Endangerment?

The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly prepared to rescind the "endangerment finding" that underpins the regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

Tomorrow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to release its final rule rescinding the "endangerment finding" for greenhouse gases. By taking this step, the Trump Administration is hoping to undercut the federal regulation of greenhouse gases and deprive the EPA of any authority to adopt such rules under the Clean Air Act.

I am on record arguing that this is a risky move. As a legal matter, attempting to undo the endangerment finding is not as simple or straightforward as many political commentators seem to think. The rule will immediately be subject to legal challenge, initially in the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which is not the most friendly venue for aggressive deregulatory moves. As the New York Times reported, the Administration is nonetheless hoping that it can get this issue before the Supreme Court before the end of the Trump Administration, lest a new administration undercuts the defense of the rule.

It is hard to handicap any prospective legal challenge to the final rule rescinding the endangerment finding until it is released, as much will depend on the specific strategy the EPA has adopted, and how well that strategy is executed.

For background on the legal issues and what may be in store, here are some of my posts on the subject:

• Can the EPA Rescind the Endangerment Finding? Should It Even Try?, May 10, 2025;
• Can the EPA Finesse the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding?, May 16, 2025;
• NYT: EPA Embarking on Endangerment Finding Fool's Errand, July 23, 2025;
• Why Trying to Undo the Endangerment Finding Is A High-Risk (and Low-Reward) Deregulatory Strategy, September 15, 2025.

More to come!

Comments

[MollyGodiva]

Despite what MAGAs want to belive, man made climate change due to greenhouse gases is both real and significant. We are already seeing the effects.

[LexAquilia]

lmao and men can *poof* and by the power of thought alone turn themselves into real women!!

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, but the question wasn't whether it was significant or real. It was whether it was endangering.

[Riva]

A breathtakingly stupid bit of circular reasoning that actually differs very little from the equally idiotic circular reasoning of the attribution studies supporting the climate change fraud. The professional grifters just dress up their language a little.

[Kazinski]

Here is the actual science:

"Our present cold period marked by permanent Polar icecaps and mountain glaciers called the Pleistocene-Holocene Ice Age, which began 2.6 My ago, is climatologically similar to only two other periods in the last 540 My: the Hirnantian glaciation of the Late Ordovician some 445 My ago, and the Pennsylvanian glaciation of the Late Carboniferous about 320 My ago... Thus, from a geological standpoint, we inhabit an unusual "cold snap" in time."

So we can look where we are in terms of the actual temperature record of the planet over the long term, or we can decide that the ideal temperature was 1850 when they after the fact first decided they had enough temperature stations to compile a global temperature record.

Graphs at the link.
https://x.com/i/status/2020960727910187115

[Sarcastr0]

Uh, that’s a crank who doesn’t even think the greenhouse effect is real.

You sure can pick them!

[John F. Carr]

The administration recently elected a three judge court in an employment discrimination case in an apparent attempt to get the case to the Supreme Court during Trump's term. Appeals from three judge courts go directly to the Supreme Court. The allegation is that state affirmative action rules are illegal discrimination. A Democrat would drop the case.

[John F. Carr]

The government is expected to rely on a report from last summer by a committee convened by the Department of Energy. A judge recently ruled that the committee violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The remedy did not include vacating the report. So it's there to cite.

[Incunabulum]

> The rule will immediately be subject to legal challenge,

How much legal challenge was allowed to them making the ruling in the first place?