President Trump on Thursday announced the EPA is revoking the endangerment finding, the government’s legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in place since 2009.
The finding acknowledges that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to public health, which has been the consensus among the vast majority of climate scientists for decades.
“It has nothing to do with public health,” Trump said Thursday from the Roosevelt Room. “This was all a scam, a giant scam. This was a rip-off of the country by Obama and Biden.”
The repeal proposal cited a draft report from the “Climate Working Group,” a gathering of five scientists picked by the Energy Secretary to examine the relevant science.
“They wrote a very slanted report in private,” said Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, whose group has vowed to challenge the move in court. “And that document that those five handpicked people wrote, you know, is the justification for this. It is not the least bit credible or scientific.”
MS NOW has reviewed documents recently released by the Environmental Defense Fund as part of its lawsuit challenging the formation of the working group.
When Zeldin initially proposed revoking the endangerment finding, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine re-evaluated the policy, finding the science “has stood the test of time,” and is “now reinforced by even stronger science.”
But one member of the working group wrote in an email, “[w]ithout even reading the NASEM report I assume it’s useless,” later saying the NASEM “deserve the DOGE treatment.” In another email, a team member wrote that lawyers involved in the case “believe they can win this fight without the science,” but said that “if the science argument is decided upon by a vote, or by the number of published citations, we lose.” “This repeal is unlawful. The Supreme Court decided years ago that of course climate pollution endangers people and human lives,” Krupp said. “We have a very strong case, and we will see them in court.” The EPA and DOE have not immediately responded to MS NOW’s request for comment on the Climate Working Group. In a statement to the New York Times from July, a spokesman for Energy Secretary Chris Wright said, “The activists behind this case have long misrepresented not just the actual state of climate science, but also the so-called scientific consensus.”
Nick McCool is an overnight reporter for MS NOW.
Kate Holland is a segment reporter for MS NOW Recommended
