Environment — News & Analysis

EPA proposes to repeal the endangerment finding — the legal backbone of all U.S. climate regulation (July 29, 2025)

July 29, 2025 — At an auto dealership in Indiana, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the administration's formal proposal to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding — the EPA's scientific declaration, upheld by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare and must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Zeldin called the move "a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion" and characterized it as the largest deregulatory action in American history. Without the endangerment finding, the EPA would lose its legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases at all.

The finding had been developed by 31 climate experts, peer-reviewed, and verified by scientists at NASA, NOAA, the USDA Forest Service, and other federal agencies. The proposal to revoke it was not based on new science — it was based on a legal argument that the Clean Air Act simply does not give the EPA authority to regulate emissions tied to global climate change. A National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine analysis issued simultaneously concluded that the evidence linking rising emissions to negative human health outcomes was "beyond scientific dispute."

A formal repeal of the endangerment finding would topple the legal foundation for rules governing emissions from power plants, cars and trucks, and the oil and gas industry — and for any future administration's ability to regulate greenhouse gases without new congressional action. Industry groups were split: fossil fuel companies largely supported the move, while automakers and utilities, facing massive capital investments premised on regulatory certainty, had not asked for it.