On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency repealed the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which identified six greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide and methane — as public health threats and provided the foundation for federal regulators to enforce greenhouse gas emission standards with the auto industry.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin spoke at a Toyota dealership in Huntersville on Friday to discuss the rollback of these key greenhouse gas regulations. He called this the “largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States.”
Zeldin made the announcement two hours east of Asheville, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024 — an event exacerbated by warmer-than-average ocean temperatures. He said it was no longer his job to regulate planet-warming emissions.
“This was a devastating storm that hit western North Carolina, and it is very important to us at the EPA to help them rebuild,” Zeldin said. “But what I'm not going to do is grant myself new powers that are not authorized in federal statute to take actions that amount to trillions of dollars of new regulation.”
What does the law say about the EPA regulating greenhouse gases?
Zeldin said the EPA lacked authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“If you read Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, you won't find anything about global climate change,” Zeldin said.
Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act gives the federal administration authority to regulate “air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare” coming from motor vehicles. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “the Clean Air Act’s sweeping definition of air pollutant unambiguously covers greenhouse gases” in Massachusetts vs. EPA.
This led to the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld in 2010.
“The finding has been challenged in court,” said Peter Zalzal, a climate policy expert with the Environmental Defense Fund. “It was challenged immediately, and those challenges were rejected by the court.”
