On 29 July, in an Indian truck dealership, the Agency for the protection of the US environment (EPA) announced what could be the most drastic step back in American climatic policy: the proposal to cancel the “endangerment false”, or the formal conclusion that greenhouse gases represent a danger to public health. A move that, if approved, would empty much of the environmental regulations currently in force.
What is the “endangerynt false” and because it matters
This conclusion, published in 2009 under the Obama administration and supported by the 2007 Supreme Court sentence (Massachusetts v. EPA), recognized that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases threaten human well -being. It is the legal basis that allows the APA to regulate the emissions of key sectors such as transport, industry and energy production.
Trump’s strategy: “Drill, Baby, Drill”
Behind the proposal there is a clear vision: deregulation to relaunch the production of fossil fuels. The initiative is part of the wider plan “Drill, Baby, drill” (drill, treasure, drill), promoted by the Trump administration to encourage oil and gas extraction.
The administrator of the APA, Lee Zeldin, said that the abolition of the norm would be “the largest deregulation action in the history of the United States”. But the legal and scientific arguments underlying the proposal are controversial. According to Zeldin, the Clean Air Act (the main federal law of the United States on air quality) would allow only the pollution with local, non -global impacts.
A position criticized by experts such as Zealan Hoover, a former APA councilor, according to which, reports the Guardian, “the Clean Air Act requires regulating any air pollution that can reasonably jeopardize public health”.
An attack on climate science
The Energy Department supported the proposal with a 150 -page ratio that questioned the scientific consensus on climate change, claiming that carbon could have positive effects on agriculture and that the extreme cold would be more dangerous than the heat. Thesis deemed misleading by many climatologists, according to which the consolidated scientific literature is ignored.
According to the former APA director, Andrew Wheeler, today the political and legal soil is more favorable to the revocation compared to the past, also thanks to a Supreme Court with a solid conservative majority.
Concrete consequences: a jump back of decades
Without the “Endangerment Finding”, the EPA would no longer have the authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The most affected sectors would be those of transport (responsible for 29% of US emissions) and energy production (23%). Also heavy industry, cement and chemistry could remain without constraints, making efforts vain to contain global warming within 1.5 ° C.
Abigail Dillen of Earthjustice said that the proposal of the APA sends a clear message: “For industries: polluted more. For those who suffer from climatic disasters: you are alone”.
The possible countermeasures
The proposal is now subjected to a 45 -day public consultation period. Once aimed, a wave of legal appeals is expected, which could reach the Supreme Court. However, the outcome of these causes is uncertain. “The Supreme Court has already issued decisions that have weakened environmental regulation,” said Columbia Law School Michael Gerrard.
In the meantime, paradoxically, the elimination of the APA regulatory authority could also damage oil companies, which in civil trials had so far argued that only the EPA could manage emissions. Without this shield, they could be exposed to millionaire causes by cities and states for climatic damage.
What remains of US climatic policy?
Although some regulations could survive – such as the 2020 bipartisan law on the reduction of hydrofluorocarbons – the revocation of the discovery of the danger would mark a profound downsizing of the federal climatic action.
With a world that approaches dangerously to exceed the critical threshold of 1.5 ° C, and with increasingly frequent extreme climatic events, the proposal of the APA represents much more than a legal or bureaucratic dispute. It is a battle on the very future of the fight against climate change.
As a group of climatologists wrote in an open letter on AGU Advances (June 2025), “sixteen years later, scientific evidence in support of the conclusion on the danger are even stronger. And there is no credible contrary evidence”.
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