WASHINGTON — Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Tuesday that the Trump administration will revoke the scientific determination that underpins the government’s legal authority to combat climate change.
Speaking at a truck dealership in Indianapolis, Zeldin said the EPA plans to rescind the 2009 declaration, known as the endangerment finding, which concluded that planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. The Obama and Biden administrations used that determination to set strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants, and other industrial sources of pollution.
“The proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,’’ Zeldin said. He said the proposal would also erase limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks on the nation’s roads.
Without the endangerment finding, the EPA would be left with no authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions that are accumulating in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.
The proposal is President Trump’s most consequential step yet to derail federal climate efforts. It marks a notable shift in the administration’s position from one that had downplayed the threat of global warming to one that essentially flatly denies the overwhelming scientific evidence of climate change.
The plan not only would reverse current regulations, but, if upheld in court, could make it much harder for future administrations to rein in climate pollution from the burning of coal, oil, and gas.
Without the United States working to reduce emissions, it becomes far tougher for the world to collectively prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels. That is the threshold beyond which climate scientists say there is significantly greater risk from increasingly destructive storms, droughts, wildfires, and heat waves, as well as from species extinction.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also moved to scrap restrictions on pollution from power plants, halt key measurements of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and delay approvals of wind and solar energy projects on federal lands.
“Today’s EPA announcement ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis and sidelines the EPA’s own scientists and lawyers in favor of the interests and profits of the fossil fuel industry,’’ former vice president Al Gore said in a statement.
To justify the proposal, the EPA cited a report that the Energy Department commissioned from five scientists known for their rejection of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, namely that it is being driven by the burning of fossil fuels, which releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
The New York Times first reported that the Energy Department had hired these scientists, including Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author of a bestselling book that calls climate science “unsettled,’’ and John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming.
In their report, the scientists criticized the computer models used to predict climate change, saying they tend to overestimate warming. They also wrote that carbon dioxide, the most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, has positive effects by helping plants grow and increasing agricultural productivity. And they asserted that overall, government climate regulations have a limited effect on global temperature rise.
The EPA echoed this last argument in the proposed rule, saying greenhouse gases from cars on American roads do not contribute significantly to climate change because they are a small share of global emissions. Reducing these emissions to zero “would not have a scientifically measurable impact’’ on global climate trends or on public health and welfare, the agency said. Instead, the agency said, climate regulations are what pose the true threat to public health and welfare, because they increase the price of new vehicles and leave fewer choices for car buyers.
Many environmental activists and lawyers criticized those arguments, noting that transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. If the US motor vehicle sector were a country, it would be the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, according to the EPA’s own data.
“If vehicle emissions don’t pass muster as a contribution to climate change, it’s hard to imagine what would,’’ said Dena Adler, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.
Dan Becker, who leads transportation policy for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, called the EPA plan a “cynical one-two punch’’ that would lead to more gasoline-burning vehicles on the road and fewer tools to reduce tailpipe pollution. He said the auto-emissions rules being rescinded were projected to prevent 7 billion metric tons of emissions from entering the atmosphere while saving the average US driver about $6,000 in fuel and maintenance over the lifetime of vehicles built under the standards.
“The EPA is revoking the biggest single step any nation has taken to save oil, save consumers money at the pump, and combat global warming,’’ Becker said.
The administration’s plan has its backers. Daren Bakst, who directs the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market research organization, said, “It is unreasonable to claim that pollutants contribute to endangerment if emissions are de minimis.’’
Indiana Governor Mike Braun said at the event in Indianapolis that the Biden administration’s vehicle emissions rules had burdened the auto industry in the state. “As a lifelong entrepreneur for 37 years actually in the automotive business, I think I know a thing or two about it, and you can count on Indiana being for common sense and reining in government,’’ he said.
The proposed repeal of the endangerment finding is all but certain to draw legal challenges, and David Doniger, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said he expected it to be eventually struck down in court. He noted that climate science has advanced significantly since 2009, when the finding was issued.
After the proposal is published in the Federal Register, the EPA will solicit comments from the public for 45 days, Zeldin said. The agency will then finalize the rule, most likely in the next year.