US President Donald Trump has reversed a scientific finding that underpins US efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, marking Trump's biggest effort to dismantle climate regulations, Euronews reports.
The Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has cancelled a 2009 "endangerment finding" that found that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
The Obama-era finding is the legal basis for most climate rules under the Clean Air Act covering emissions from cars, power plants and other sources that warm the planet. Court challenges are expected.
The repeal wipes out all greenhouse gas standards for cars and trucks and could open the door to rolling back on rules on power plants and oil and gas sites, according to experts.
Trump praised the move as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far,” while EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.”
Trump called the endangerment finding “one of the greatest scams in history,” claiming falsely that it “had no basis in fact” or law.
“On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world,” while scientists widely agree that greenhouse gases are driving catastrophic heat waves and storms, rising sea levels and droughts.
The EPA also said it will propose a two-year delay of a Biden-era rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman chosen by Trump to lead the EPA, has accused past Democratic administrations of being ‘willing to bankrupt the country’ in the name of fighting climate change.
