Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled back a key climate finding that gave the federal agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Wednesday morning, environmental groups took the EPA and its administrator, Lee Zeldin, to court.
The 2009 Endangerment Finding 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.
Zeldin discussed the repeal the following day at a Toyota dealership in Huntersville, acknowledging the damage that Hurricane Helene wrought just two hours west.
“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.”
The plaintiffs in the EPA lawsuit include the Sierra Club, American Lung Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC. Asheville-based Drew Ball, a campaigns director with the NRDC, responded to Zeldin’s statement:
“It's a little insulting to use western North Carolina, my home, as an example,” Ball said. “We just lived through a hurricane in the mountains of western North Carolina [...] which attribution science and studies since Helene clearly show was a weather event made worse by climate change.”
Hurricane Helene intensified rapidly after encountering warmer-than-average waters in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an analysis by Climate Central.
Zeldin said the Clean Air Act does not give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases. The Supreme Court rejected this argument in a landmark ruling in 2007.
During the news conference in Charlotte, Zeldin said the 2009 Endangerment Finding was based on “the most pessimistic views” and “flawed assumptions” about climate change.
“As far as getting deeper into the science, one of the great things here in 2026 is that we're able to rely on 2026 facts, not 2009 bad assumptions,” Zeldin said.
The EPA will no longer regulate greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, from cars, trucks and other mobile sources. The plaintiffs are asking the court to review this action.
“So this is not about science evolving,” Ball said. “It's about politics overriding science.”
