The Environmental Protection Agency is trying to end the basic government consensus that climate change hurts human health and the environment, launching what’s likely to become a multiyear legal battle over whether the United States can set limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Tuesday that the agency would be repealing what’s known as the “endangerment finding,” the 2009 conclusion reached during the Obama administration that a combination of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, are contributing to climate change and thus endangering the public.
That conclusion, widely accepted as strong science, is the basis for nearly all federal government climate regulations, including limits on emissions from cars and trucks, power plants and methane leaks from oil and gas drilling.