• Posted July 30, 2025

EPA Moves to Cancel Key Climate Regulations That Limit Pollution

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is looking to remove the legal underpinning for most regulations against climate change.

If approved, the EPA’s proposal would rescind the 2009 decision that set forth a legal basis to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. Known as the "endangerment finding," it allowed the EPA to limit emissions from vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas companies under the Clean Air Act.

The new proposal argues that Congress didn't give the EPA permission in the Clean Air Act to regulate these emissions and that the agency essentially overstepped its power.

“If finalized, today’s announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said, as reported by The Washington Post.

The EPA issued the endangerment finding in 2009 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are air pollutants.

The finding said these gases endanger public health and welfare, allowing the EPA to set rules to limit them. These rules have led to stricter standards for car emissions and limits on pollution from power plants.

Former EPA adviser Zealan Hoover told The Post that the new proposal was "not just an attack on science but on common sense.”

“The National Climate Assessment provides over 2,000 pages of detailed evidence that climate change harms our health and welfare, but you can also ask the millions of Americans who have lost their homes and livelihoods to extreme fires, floods and storms that are only getting worse," Hoover explained.

A spokesman for Ford said the automaker supports clearer rules and hopes for “a single, stable standard” that helps reduce emissions while protecting manufacturing jobs.

Zeldin said the agency still supports clean air and water but wants to balance environmental protection with economic growth, The Post reported.

Others predicted the EPA’s legal arguments won't hold up in court.

“They think this is a holy grail to get rid of the whole thing in one fell swoop as opposed to having to weaken regulations one by one,” Richard Revesz, a law professor at New York University, told The Post.

He said he was surprised by the EPA's arguments, which he characterized as “haphazardly thrown together.”

“They just kind of pile it on, maybe hoping that one of them will stick,” he told The Post.

Others pointed out that the EPA’s proposal challenges widely accepted science. For example, it disputes reports by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which many scientists view as the global standard.

Rachel Cleetus, a climate expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, “They are fringe arguments. They do not have credibility, and they go against the established science.”

The EPA’s move dovetails with a separate report from the U.S. Department of Energy. That report claimed that "CO2-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed” and “U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate.”

But critics say the costs of climate-related disasters and health issues far outweigh the savings from cutting regulations. 

Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA estimated emissions rules would save $1 trillion through 2055, in part by reducing hospital visits and early deaths.

If the proposed rule is finalized and survives court challenges, it could limit how future presidents respond to fossil fuel emissions.

David Doniger is a legal expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“The law unambiguously includes greenhouse gases as air pollutants, and the law unambiguously makes it clear that the endangerment and contribution findings limit that to public health and science issues, not to broad economic and policy issues,” he told The Post.

“You’re asking the American people who are living through wildfires, floods, hurricanes, heat domes and so on, not to believe what they’re going through, not to believe their own eyes,” Doniger continued. “At some point what they’re claiming is going to appear to people to be mind-bogglingly false and out of touch.”

More information

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has more about the Clean Air Act. 

SOURCE: The Washington Post, July 29, 2025