WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Feb. 12 announced the elimination of a 2009 finding that served as the basis of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing on Feb. 10.
Savings are expected to come from lower automobile costs, she said, with reductions averaging about $2,400 per vehicle.
The leaders rescinded the agency’s “endangerment finding” from 2009, established under the Obama administration, which declared that six gases—including carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—pose a danger to public health.
The EPA’s 2009 ruling concluded that the gases endangered current and future public health and contributed to climate change. Subsequent regulations based on the finding include vehicle emissions standards, the Clean Power Plan, and other limits on methane, oil, and gas.
Removing the endangerment rule is a central component of Trump’s deregulation strategy, which also seeks to mitigate the economic impact of the Clean Air Act’s greenhouse gas standards.
The president tackled the issue on his first day back in office, signing an executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy,” directing Zeldin to review the ruling.
Officials prioritized dismantling climate change-related guidelines they said were limiting business opportunities and raising consumer prices.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” Zeldin said in a March 2025 statement.
Trump rolled back dozens of energy and climate-related regulations in his first term. He frequently describes the regulations as burdensome elements of a “green new scam.”
“The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction,” he told the United Nations General Assembly in September of last year.
“The entire globalist concept of asking successful industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected completely and totally, and it must be immediate.”
Long a champion of domestic energy production, Trump campaigned on a “drill baby drill” agenda, promising to lower inflation by reducing the cost of gasoline and other fuels.
Critics of the rule change argued that Americans will pay a toll for the loss of regulations.
“This action will only lead to more of this pollution, and that will lead to higher costs and real harms for American families,” Fred Krupp, president of the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement.
“The evidence, and the lived experiences of so many Americans, tell us that our health will suffer.”
