The battle over US climate rules is just beginning

Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency It is expected to decline the threat finding, which supports the US ability to regulate Greenhouse gases This is why Climate change. The rollback, the result of more than 15 years of work by right-wing special interest groups, represents the most aggressive move against climate regulation in the United States yet, and will set up a long fight that is almost certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

The move could also create significant legal and regulatory uncertainty for a wide range of industries, from oil companies fighting state and local climate lawsuits to auto companies trying to plan production of new models in the midst of an ongoing legal battle.

“I don’t see any plan, any strategy, any end game,” says Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at the University of Vermont. “I don’t see anything from this administration, just destroy everything you can. You can print that.”

The Clean Air Act states that the EPA regulates any type of air pollution that may pose a risk to public health and welfare. The hazard finding is a 2009 ruling that creates a scientific and legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. This finding is the basis for every climate-based regulation the agency has issued since then, from restrictions on power plants to emissions standards for cars.

The original finding was mandated by a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPAin a lawsuit the state brought against the Bush administration, challenging it for not taking action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. The Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

Even before this decision officially came to light, it was a political football for right-wing interests. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, the Bush-era EPA sent an email to the White House linking six greenhouse gases to climate change and detailing a number of disparate impacts on public health and the environment. However, the White House refused to open the email to acknowledge the science and the finding, delaying the matter for nearly two years until the email was made public. Released In 2009 during the Obama administration. Right-wing groups, including the Heritage Foundation, the group behind the Project 2025 plan, were as well Vocal critics of EPA’s governance and actions on greenhouse gases for nearly two decades. (As The New York Times reported Monday, The Heritage Foundation Funded campaign In 2022 to help create the regulatory documents that made it possible to cancel the discovery of the risk.)

The threat has proven to be significantly more difficult for these groups to attack. Both of Trump’s first EPA administrators refused to challenge the findings while in office, despite pressure from ideologues inside and outside that administration.

This reluctance is thanks in part to companies supporting the original EPA ruling. “The industry has generally been supportive of stability in this area and EPA retaining its regulatory authority,” says Megan Greenfield, a former senior adviser at the EPA. “The hazard finding serves this really important purpose of providing a level playing field and recognizing EPA’s authority.”

A Draft copy The retraction issued this summer contained a myriad of arguments aimed at undermining these findings, including the assertion that because greenhouse gas emissions are global, they should not be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

“This proposal has put spaghetti at the wall,” says Rachel Cletus, senior policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There are all kinds of arguments, and they’re all baseless — Clean Air Act arguments, scientific arguments, cost arguments.”