EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin held a press conference at the White House to announce that the EPA has repealed the 2009 “endangerment finding” that found that greenhouse gases threaten human life and well-being, and could therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
This means that all federal regulations and requirements related to these gases are now off the books. Zeldin, who called this “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” claimed that repealing the finding would save the economy over $1 trillion. Emissions by motor vehicles are no longer limited, and policies to reduce them will disappear. (This does not affect limits of pollutants that directly harm human health, such as NOₓ and benzene.)
The EPA press release specifically mentions that the EPA will no longer incentivize [sic] automakers to have the auto start-stop feature that turns off the engine when waiting at a red light or in heavy traffic.
The new rule will “save Americans over $1.3 trillion” by rolling back regulatory requirements related to implementation of section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act, which authorizes the EPA to set standards for “any air pollutant from … motor vehicles … which contribute to air pollution and which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
Zeldin said that the Obama administration had erred in finding that CO₂ was such a pollutant, and that the significant difference from the meaning of the term when the law was drafted requires that Congress now explicitly authorize greenhouse gas standards in new legislation.
