EPA Must Reconsider Flawed, Unlawful Decision to Repeal the Endangerment Finding

(Washington, D.C.) Sixteen health and environmental groups filed a petition with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency outlining severe flaws in its rule to repeal the Endangerment Finding and motor vehicle climate pollution standards and describing how the Clean Air Act requires the agency to reconsider that damaging action. 

The petition focuses on the repeal’s incorrect claims that reducing climate pollution from U.S. cars and trucks is “futile.” It’s an especially flawed and problematic assertion given that these vehicles are the largest source of climate pollution in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world and given the clear evidence that reducing this pollution will deliver enormous benefits to American families. 

"The Trump EPA is arguing that there's nothing to be done about greenhouse gas emissions. In its words, it's all `futile.' But the science and technical analysis behind that conclusion is fatally flawed, and the public never had a chance to weigh in and correct the record,” said Abi Vijayan, a senior attorney for climate at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “Once its errors are corrected, EPA’s own analysis does not even support its conclusions.” 

“The Trump EPA needs to pull this rule back and do the science the right way. If it did, it would show that limiting climate pollution would make us safer,” Vijayan said. “The only thing futile here is the EPA's chances in court if it doesn't correct these errors.”  

The Endangerment Finding is EPA’s foundational 2009 determination that climate pollution poses a danger to human health and well-being. It is based on a mountain of scientific evidence that has grown larger and more robust since then, and it underpins U.S. actions to reduce this harmful pollution. 

Last year EPA proposed repealing the Endangerment Finding and motor vehicle climate pollution standards. During the public comment period, hundreds of thousands of people, businesses, and public health experts told EPA they were opposed to the action. In February, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin finalized the repeal anyway. However, key aspects of the final rule are entirely new and were not in the proposal – so the public never had a chance to comment on them. The U.S. Clean Air Act guarantees the American people the right to review, address, and comment on the basis for this damaging decision that will lead to massive air pollution and health harms.  

“If EPA had properly noticed these issues for public comment, commenters would have identified critical modeling flaws, analytical inconsistencies, unsupportable assumptions, and other objections to EPA’s analysis and methodologies,” the petition states.  

Most notable is the completely new modeling and analysis conducted by EPA, after the public comment period, in order to support its cynical claim that reducing climate pollution from U.S. motor vehicles would be “futile.” EPA had made this flawed claim in its proposal, but relied on the findings of a widely discredited report that a federal court has since ruled was created illegally. In its final rule, EPA claims it is no longer using that unlawful report and is instead relying only on its new modeling. 

The deficiencies in the final rule, as identified in the petition, are consistent with – and reinforce – the serious flaws throughout the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Endangerment Finding, including the rushed and secretive process and the strong evidence that Administrator Zeldin had prejudged the outcome of the rulemaking before it concluded. 

EDF, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), Union of Concerned Scientists, Earthjustice, Sierra Club, Clean Air Task Force, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Conservation Law Foundation, Public Citizen, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Clean Wisconsin, Clean Air Council, American Public Health Association, American Lung Association, Center for Biological Diversity, and Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments signed the petition. Many of those groups have already filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging the repeal of the Endangerment Finding and vehicle emissions standards. The petition for administrative reconsideration is filed directly with EPA and is in addition to that lawsuit. 

Read the petition and accompanying appendices here.