After years of magical thinking, America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to see the forest for the trees again. Administrator Lee Zeldin announced this week that the EPA is reconsidering the 2009 endangerment finding that greenhouse gases are pollutants.

This is massive. The endangerment finding underpins regulations on cars and the power sector. If it were overturned, Donald Trump could reverse costly environmental regulations put in place without explicit Congressional approval over the past decade and a half, reducing the costs of electricity and transportation.

The history of the endangerment finding dates from 2007, during the presidency of George W Bush. The Supreme Court interpreted the Clean Air Act to give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) if the agency decided that these gases from particular sources caused pollution and endangered the public.

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Fast forward to 2009, when Barack Obama’s EPA concluded that six greenhouse gases endangered public health, allowing the agency to regulate emissions of these gases under the Clean Air Act. This “endangerment finding” triggered an onslaught of EPA climate regulations that spread to Europe and sparked the international net zero movement. This raised manufacturing costs in the West and encouraged offshoring to Asia, without necessarily reducing global emissions.

The endangerment finding used data from the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In the intervening 18 years, more data have become available, and the EPA is seeking to reconsider whether greenhouse gases are having the consequences predicted in 2009. The IPCC has written a Sixth Assessment Report, published in 2022, with updated conclusions.

In addition, new Supreme Court decisions have limited the discretion granted to cabinet agencies. Executive branch agencies must hew to the letter of the law, rather than being free to interpret laws as they see fit. Anything else would be to usurp the authority of Congress, which has never explicitly authorized the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions.

If the EPA finds that greenhouse gases are not pollutants, some regulations in America would be eliminated, with potential savings of trillions of dollars. The average new car costs almost $50,000, up from $23,000 in 2009, partly due to environmental regulations.

Administrator Zeldin said: “We will follow the science, the law, and common sense wherever it leads, and we will do so while advancing our commitment towards helping to deliver cleaner, healthier, and safer air, land, and water.”

The administration is presenting a united front on reconsidering the endangerment finding. The secretaries of the Departments of Energy, Transportation, and Interior, and the directors of the powerful Office of Management and Budget and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the White House, all issued supportive statements.

Transportation secretary Duffy declared: “This will allow the DOT to accelerate its work on new vehicle fuel economy standards that will lower car prices and no longer force Americans to purchase electric vehicles they don’t want.”

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Some of the regulations buttressed by the endangerment finding include Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have forced power plants out of business and was overturned by the Supreme Court in West Virginia vs. EPA; auto emissions regulations that have gradually ratcheted up and could have required around 70 per cent of new cars sold in 2032 to be battery-powered or plug-in electric; and methane controls on farms. Yet predictions that the EPA considered accurate in 2009 have since been updated.

The endangerment finding has been used as a political tool to advance control over the U.S. economy, giving regulators the power to determine which industries could be eliminated and which could flourish. It enables subsidies for particular industries and redistribution of resources. Such regulations have become entrenched worldwide, with the consequence that net zero policies are deindustrializing Europe and preventing countries in Latin America and Africa from accessing their fossil fuel resources.

The U.S. environmental regulatory system is premised on a 2007 analysis of climate science from the start of Obama’s term. But as Obama’s former undersecretary for research at the Department of Energy, Steve Koonin, wrote in his book Unsettled, the science should not prematurely be declared settled.

Above all, regulators should not be given the power to fundamentally reshape American life without democratic approval. The EPA should be congratulated. Manhattan, cows, and farmers can breathe easier again.