EPA's Climate Denial Puts Americans in Danger

The EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding” was backed by overwhelming evidence, including reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the U.S. National Climate Assessments (NCA), representing the work of thousands of scientists. Subsequent IPCC and NCA reports have only strengthened the mountain of evidence backing the finding.

But Administrator Zeldin’s proposal claims there are new “uncertainties” that “may” call the 2009 finding into question. For support, he relies not on the EPA’s own work but on a draft report from a “Climate Working Group” made up of five climate contrarians handpicked by Energy Secretary Chris Wright. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the EPA empaneled the group to meet in secret and rush out a draft report with no external peer review or public comment, and without meeting any scientific integrity and transparency rules, before it was used to prop up the EPA proposal. 

Scientists are pushing back hard against both the draft Climate Working Group report and the EPA proposal. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) last week released a blockbuster report rebuffing Zeldin’s claims. Its main conclusions: 

• The EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding “was accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.” The evidence is “beyond scientific dispute.”
• The United States “faces a future in which climate-induced harm continues to worsen, and today’s extremes become tomorrow’s norms.”
• Climate change driven by greenhouse gas pollution “harm[s] the health of people in the United States” and “the severity of expected [climate] change increase[es] with every ton of greenhouse gases emitted.”

As for the five contrarians’ Climate Working Group report, more than 85 scientists jointly dissected its many errors and omissions: “[T]he CWG report exhibits pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics.” The report “does not meet standards of quality, utility, objectivity and integrity appropriate for use in supporting policy making.” They come to the same conclusion as the NAS:

Separately, the American Meteorological Society slammed the Climate Working Group report as written to support “pre-drawn conclusions that are at odds with comprehensive assessments of scientific evidence. Therefore, its representation of scientific understanding and its conclusions are not scientifically defensible.” 

In comments to the EPA, more than 1,000 scientists, public health experts, and economists called out “the indisputable scientific evidence of human-caused climate change, its harmful impacts on people’s health and well-being, and the devastating costs it is imposing on communities across the nation and around the world.” 

And another 1,000 scientists joined a letter from the American Geophysical Union, saying that "climate change, which is unequivocally driven by human activities that increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is endangering human health and welfare in the United States and globally."

When the Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists sued the EPA and DOE for violating the balance and transparency requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, a federal judge rejected the government’s disingenuous claim that the report doesn’t offer any “advice.” Trying to defeat the lawsuit, Secretary Wright purported to disband the group but without withdrawing the report. The report authors have said they will respond to the adverse comments on their own, but the DOE has given no indication that anyone on the department’s payroll will be assigned this task. 

That leaves EPA chief Zeldin holding the bag to respond to all the adverse comments on the Climate Working Group report, if he chooses to continue to rely on it. Since he has pushed out or fired many EPA climate experts, it’s a mystery how he will accomplish that. 

Nearly 20 years ago in Massachusetts v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court held it “unambiguous” that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act. Noting that U.S. vehicles emit “an enormous quantity” of carbon dioxide each year, the Court held that the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to make a scientific judgment on whether those air pollutants “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” and whether vehicle emissions of those air pollutants “contribute” to that air pollution. The Court further held that the EPA had no authority to justify inaction by relying on a laundry list of nonscientific “policy considerations,” ranging from a preference for voluntary action to a desire to hold back U.S. regulation as an international bargaining chip. 

Here we go again. Administrator Zeldin’s proposal claims the Clean Air Act covers only motor vehicle emissions that harm us through “local or regional exposure to the air pollutant itself.” There are no such limitations in the act, which includes “adverse effects on weather and climate” among the harms that the EPA is supposed to protect against. Nor is there any such limitation in the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts decision, which recognizes that climate pollution spreads across the world and hurts us by raising temperatures, making extreme weather more severe, and eroding our coasts to rising sea levels. 

Zeldin’s proposal claims his agency can’t find that vehicle emissions contribute to the dangers of climate change unless vehicle standards alone would cure the problem, or at least make “a measurable difference.” But the Supreme Court found in Massachusetts that neither Congress nor the EPA is required to “resolve massive problems in one fell swoop.” And as the NAS report reiterates: “the severity of expected [climate] change increase[es] with every ton of greenhouse gases emitted.” 

Curbing climate change requires cutting greenhouse gas pollution from many sources, here and abroad. If the U.S. transportation sector were its own country, it would be the fifth-highest emitting country in the world. It’s bizarre for Administrator Zeldin just to throw up his hands. When you face a five-alarm fire, you send all the fire trucks. You don’t leave them in the firehouse because a single truck can’t put out the blaze by itself.

Zeldin also contends that the EPA can’t make the danger or contribution determinations without considering how much vehicle emission standards will cost. Putting aside the fact that these standards actually save car owners money, this is exactly the sort of “policy considerations” the Supreme Court ruled as being off-limits in Massachusetts.

Trump’s team may be hoping for the current Supreme Court to overturn Massachusetts. But they’re not reckoning with the fact that the Court has followed its 2007 precedent in three climate cases since then, including West Virginia v. EPA, decided in 2022. The EPA must follow the law as Congress enacted it and the Court has interpreted it. And the major questions doctrine has no bearing on the EPA’s authority here: The Supreme Court found in 2007 that the text of the act is unambiguous. There is no question left open for the major questions doctrine to answer. 

The EPA’s greenhouse gas standards for vehicles have been cutting pollution, saving money, and making us all better off for 15 years. Zeldin’s proposal argues that even if the endangerment and contribution findings remain in place, there are other reasons why all of these standards—going back to 2010 and forward to 2032—should be eliminated. But none of the EPA’s arguments pass the sniff test. 

Zeldin claims the technology isn’t available. But today’s new cars, SUVs, and light trucks emit, on average, roughly half the carbon pollution per mile compared to new vehicles made 15 years ago. If left in place, the standards for model year 2027 and beyond, adopted by President Joe Biden’s EPA last year, will cut climate pollution by more than 7 billion metric tons over the next 30 years. That’s more than the current annual climate-changing emissions of the entire United States. The standards will provide $2.1 trillion dollars in net societal benefits. That includes fuel savings and lower maintenance costs for car owners, lower health costs for communities, and less extreme weather damage for everyone.

Administrator Zeldin claims the EPA imposed an “EV mandate,” but the standards are technology neutral, leaving automakers with choices, including making gas-powered cars cleaner and marketing more hybrids as well as fully electric vehicles. 

The only way Zeldin’s EPA can make its case is with migraine-inducing math that radically underestimates the cost of gasoline, and thus, consumer savings. When realistic fuel prices are used, the EPA’s supposed “$155 billion benefit of repeal” flips to $257 billion in costs. And this is not including additional climate or health costs of the repeal—since the EPA did not model these impacts. Zeldin’s proposal also sweeps the standards’ climate benefits under the rug by putting not a penny of value on avoiding more extreme heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms.

Now it’s on Administrator Zeldin and a handful of his political appointees to respond to the avalanche of critical public comments from scientists, health professionals, economists, engineers, lawyers, and thousands of everyday Americans. Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, an outraged public’s climate concerns are mightier than Zeldin’s “dagger.”