Wyoming officials are cheering Thursday’s repeal of an Obama-era rule that was the linchpin for EPA climate regulations under the Clean Air Act, including those for vehicle emissions.
Called the “Endangerment Finding,” the 2009 Environmental Protection Agency ruling established that greenhouse gases (GHG) like carbon dioxide endanger public health.
In the years since, this ruling has guided the legal baseline for numerous federal climate change-related regulations that supporters say are critical and opponents say have led to overregulation and used to justify federal government overreach.
By eliminating the rule, President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin say they are doing away with “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” according to an EPA statement announcing the move.
“In this final rule, EPA is saving American taxpayers over $1.3 trillion, eliminating the Obama-era 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and all subsequent federal (greenhouse gas) emission standards for all vehicles and engines of model years 2012-2027 and beyond,” the statement claims.
Zeldin said the regulation used climate change as a weapon for 16 years of bad policy.
“Referred to some as the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion,’ the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated,” he said.
As the Trump administration and Wyoming legislators and the state’s legacy energy industries say it’s past time to reverse suffocating climate regulations, others say eliminating the rule ignores science and panders to conservative politics.
“EPA's pending repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding is an extraordinary rejection of decades of scientific evidence and settled law,” said Rebecca Sobel, organizing director for WildEarth Guardians, in an email to Cowboy State Daily.
“Repealing the Endangerment Finding does not change the underlying science,” she said. “It simply attempts to strip the EPA of its obligation under the Clean Air Act to address climate pollution.”
Industry Reacts
The EPA hasn’t abandoned its duty to protect the environment, it’s simply refocusing on “a common-sense approach to regulation,” said Cyrus Western, Region 8 Administrator for the EPA, which includes Wyoming.
“This is a clear planting of a flagpole in the ground that we’re going back to common sense,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Thursday after the announcement. “It’s a reversal of some of the obstacles that were set in the way of some of these legacy industries.”
For Wyoming’s fossil fuel industries, getting rid of the Endangerment Finding is a huge win, but it doesn’t reverse 15 years of climate-focused regulation aimed at putting them out of business, said Travis Deti, executive director for the Wyoming Mining Association.
“There was a lot of damage done in the last 10 or 15 years, largely as a result of public policy,” he said about the impact of the 2009 rule. “And public policy matters.
“We would like to go back to the days of 460 million tons (of coal) coming out of the Powder River Basin,” Deti added, acknowledging that’s not going to happen.
Now the PRB produces about half that at a time when America is in a race to develop artificial intelligence and data centers, which are huge power hogs, he said. That can’t happen without more fossil fuel generation.
“The amount of power this country is going to need is significant, and we’re going to need more coal,” Deti said, adding that includes increased power needed to make electric vehicles.
The Endangerment Finding “underpinned all these decisions to shut down coal plants early and saying that carbon dioxide was this threat to human existence,” Deti said, adding that the impact of Thursday’s reversal “cannot be understated.”
The reversal also paves the way to bolster the economy by using CO2 commercially, said Ryan McConnaughey, vice president and director of communications for the Petroleum Association of Wyoming.
“CO2 is something we can use as a commodity for advanced oil recovery and manufacturing,” he said. “As far as what this means for (energy) production, this is just the first step, because all of the regulations this is the underpinning for are still there.”
For folks in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which produces 40% of America’s coal, the announcement is another win from a coal-friendly presidential administration, said Rusty Bell, executive director for Energy Capital Economic Development in Gillette.
“Both of these policies by President Trump are very good for Wyoming coal and energy sustainability and reliability into the future for the United States,” he said, also referencing a Wednesday executive order that coal is critical for U.S. national security.
“Energy is the most important piece to America’s prosperity and security,” Bell said. “We should be looking to add all types of generation to the grid, including significant addition of coal fired generation for that affordable reliable electricity.”
‘Will Face Immediate Legal Challenges’
As Wyoming’s legacy energy producers praise getting rid of the Endangerment Finding, environmental groups are calling the move disastrous.
“The Endangerment Finding is the legal backbone of federal climate safeguards,” Sobel said. “It reflects overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.”
That includes Western states like Wyoming, she added.
This also may not be the last word on the issue, with legal challenges to the EPA’s Thursday move almost certain, Sobel said.
“Courts have repeatedly upheld the Endangerment Finding,” she said. “Any effort to revoke it will face immediate legal challenges because the EPA cannot ignore scientific evidence or the statutory requirements of the Clean Air Act.”
David Pettit, senior attorney for climate law at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the EPA rule reversal may not be the sweeping win the administration is portraying it to be.
“In terms of energy policy, it’s important to note that the Endangerment Finding that (was) repealed today only applies to EPA regulation of GHG emissions from cars and trucks,” he said in an email to Cowboy State Daily. “It doesn’t apply to power plants, oil refineries, etc.
“Although, I’m sure that the Trump administration will try to take similar steps to take climate change effects off the table when regulating stationary sources of pollution.”
The impact now will be a huge increase of greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, Pettit said. It also ignores the health impacts of those emissions.
“In terms of climate policy, this is a rejection of the scientific consensus that climate change is injuring human health and the environment,” he said. “In my view, that is the same as believing that the Earth is flat.”
What The Delegation Says
Wyoming’s Republican congressional delegation disputes that the Endangerment Finding is based in solid science as WildEarth Guardians and Center for Biological Diversity claim.
“The Endangerment Finding was based on political expediency — not scientific standards,” U.S. Sen. John Barrasso said. “The Biden and Obama administrations routinely abused this finding as an excuse to roll out red tape that destroyed jobs across America.
“I applaud the Trump administration for reversing this harmful action and restoring common sense at the Environmental Protection Agency.”
U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis said she’s “thrilled” with the decision to revoke “the imbecilic Obama-era Endangerment Finding rule that Washington bureaucrats have utilized to expand federal overreach and control.”
She also said that when it was enacted in 2009, it wasn’t subjected to congressional scrutiny.
“This was never a rule that went through proper congressional debate or approval,” Lummis said. “Instead, it was created by unelected Democrat bureaucrats to wage a decades-long crusade to dismantle our fossil fuel industry in the name of addressing climate change.”
In a statement to Cowboy State Daily, U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman called the announcement “a necessary move to rein in years of regulatory overreach that drove up energy costs and targeted American energy production.
“This finding allowed unelected bureaucrats to stretch the Clean Air Act far beyond congressional intent, threatening grid reliability and Wyoming jobs.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
