Since repealing the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding last month, the Environmental Protection Agency has received legal pushback from 24 states, including Pennsylvania.
The Feb. 12 decision — now contested in a multistate lawsuit — marks the end of the landmark Clean Air Act finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions threaten public health and welfare, which served as the basis for federal greenhouse gas emissions standards in the United States. The Daily Pennsylvanian spoke with environmental and legal experts at Penn about the potential implications of the decision.
“The Endangerment Finding was based on robust and rigorous scientific evidence,” Earth and Environmental Science Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media Michael Mann wrote in a statement to the DP. “That evidence is now stronger than ever.”
In an interview with the DP, Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics Sarah Light similarly highlighted that the “science hasn’t changed” since the EPA’s initial release of the 2009 Endangerment Finding.
“If anything, the science has become more definitive in demonstrating the harmful effects on human health and the environment of greenhouse gas emissions,” Light said.
Mann wrote that the repeal is “part of a much larger assault on climate action and climate research.”
“Cuts to government funding for climate-related research at agencies such as NSF, NOAA, EPA and DOE are taking a huge toll at academic institutions like Penn, greatly restricting the ability of faculty, researchers and students to be supported to study Earth’s climate,” he added. “At a time when climate change has reached crisis proportions, nothing could be more irresponsible.”
Assistant professor of Political Science Parrish Bergquist also explained that the objective of this decision is to allow the Supreme Court to overturn the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA ruling, which resulted in the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“If they can win at the Supreme Court, future administrations would not be able to do climate regulations under the Clean Air Act,” Bergquist told the DP.
Light called the repeal a “very significant change” to the EPA’s actions of the past 20 years, acknowledging the “pendulum” effect created by back-to-back administrations.
Bergquist added that the EPA’s decision seeks to “tie the hands of future presidents.”
“The Trump administration has really ramped up the use of executive power in ways that were never intended under the Constitution and that were not normal in the history of American politics,” he said.
According to Light, the litigation from the states is based on the legal argument that the EPA “acted arbitrarily and capriciously in repealing the endangerment finding.”
Bergquist stated that the lawsuit indicates that the states are seeking “more action on climate change than the federal government is willing to do,” which she said reflects the political environment of when the Endangerment Finding was originally passed.
If the repeal is upheld, the EPA would no longer regulate greenhouse gas emissions for new vehicles. Light cautioned that the EPA could make the same argument with respect to power plants, further limiting federal regulatory abilities.
“The rest of the world is moving on, and the U.S. only gets to decide whether it gets left behind,” Mann wrote. “It stands to lose out in the great economic revolution of the modern era — the clean energy transition.”
Staff reporter Danna Cai covers climate and sustainability and can be reached at cai@thedp.com. At Penn, she studies biology. Follow her on X @dannaacai.
