Trump administration EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wants to rescind the 2009 “endangerment finding” that found greenhouse gases to be a threat to human health and welfare, possibly as early as this week, according to The Wall Street Journal. exhibitions.
The EPA finding laid the legal basis for federal regulation of six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, and has been unsuccessfully challenged since it was first enacted.
The move is almost certain to attract many lawsuits, and it could be years before the matter is settled. The EPA’s move will only affect emissions for cars and trucks, though the Trump administration is expected to use it to loosen regulations in other areas, such as power plants and industrial facilities.
Legacy automakers, which pushed Trump to weaken fuel efficiency rules, did not primarily push the EPA to overturn the dangerousness finding. Tesla went further, asking the EPA to uphold the finding, saying it was “based on a strong documentary and scientific record.”
If the Trump administration is successful, the US will be increasingly out of step with regulations in other advanced economies. Companies operating cross-border will have to develop different approaches for each market, increasing costs.
Automakers, in particular, face a future in which they will be forced to serve fragmented markets, at least in the short term. US regulatory crackdown combined with growing competition from China has cost automakers tens of billions of dollars.
American automakers’ reliance on fossil fuel-powered trucks, in particular, has cornered the domestic industry, providing addictive profits that distract from future-proofing their fleets before seemingly inevitable competition from Chinese brands.
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The Trump administration told the WSJ that it expects the policy change to save more than $1 trillion, though it did not provide figures to support that figure.
Climate change is expected to cost much more. The Congressional Budget Office found that nearly $1 trillion in real estate is threatened by sea level rise, and US death rates could be 2% higher if global warming is not curbed. Another study, published in 2024, found that climate change could 17% drop in global GDP by 2050, equivalent to $38 trillion annually.
