Trump EPA Eliminates 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding

Interview with Joe Goffman, former EPA administrator, conducted by Melinda Tuhus

emissions

On Feb. 12, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized its rescission of the 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding. That scientific finding had determined that carbon dioxide, methane and other air and climate pollutants could be regulated under the EPA because they had a negative impact on public health, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007.

In 2024, the Biden administration issued tailpipe emission standards requiring that greenhouse gases be reduced in cars and trucks from 2027 through 2032 and beyond. Under President Trump, the EPA has now repealed the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, triggering massive legal challenges from environmental groups.

Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Joe Goffman, who served as assistant administrator with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation under President Biden and in a similar position under President Obama. He’s now an active volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit of more than 700 former EPA staffers, including longtime civil service and political appointees who are experts in their field.  Here, Goffman talks about the Trump administration’s repeal of the greenhouse gas emissions endangerment finding.

JOE GOFFMAN: What the Trump administration did a couple of weeks ago was basically set the clock back to 2007. They said that the EPA was now going to withdraw the 2009 endangerment finding. And they made several different flavors of the argument that the Supreme Court was wrong in 2007 when it required EPA to make a determination about greenhouse gases. They made a variety of arguments that despite what the Supreme Court said, the Clean Air Act doesn’t really cover greenhouse gas emissions. And as a result, any standards, whether they were the standards that Obama issued in 2010 or the standards that were issued a couple of years later, or the standards that the Biden EPA issued in 2024—all those are gone. So now it is the position of the Environmental Protection Agency that its authorities and its tools under the Clean Air Act don’t cover greenhouse gas emissions.

And automobile and truck manufacturers no longer have to produce or market cars that control greenhouse gas emissions.

MELINDA TUHUS: Does the endangerment finding only apply to vehicle emissions or does it apply to other emissions from stationary sources that are still the same kind of emissions that they want to control?

JOE GOFFMAN: The Clean Air Act governs emissions from automobiles and trucks under one provision and governs emissions from stationary sources like power plants and oil and gas operations under another provision. The endangerment finding was issued under the car and truck provision, but the endangerment finding was based on science. The agency built a veritable metropolis of information, all reflecting peer-reviewed science that in fact accelerated climate change was taking place. It was having a myriad of bad effects on people, on economies, on the environment. And there was no question really that these emissions, these pollutants were really dangerous.
And so what the agency did when it turned to the other provision that governs power plants and oil and gas facilities, it set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from those facilities, those sources, using the same science. We haven’t seen them issue a final repeal of the Biden standards for power plants or the Biden methane standards for oil and gas production quite yet, because they’re really up against an overpowering scientific record, a number of legal challenges that go beyond even the legal challenges that they attempted to take on when they repealed the car and truck emissions requirements.

MELINDA TUHUS: So one of the things that the EPA, the director, Lee Zeldin, has talked about is repealing all these things is going to make cars and trucks so much cheaper. And I wondered if you have any comment about that, but even if it makes it cheaper in dollars, it’s certainly not cheaper in terms of the amount of emissions that are going into the air, speeding up climate change and also health impacts.
JOE GOFFMAN: I would dispute the initial statement or the initial claim that it’s going to make cars and trucks cheaper. Right now, cars and trucks that use electrification, that are EVs as opposed to internal combustion engines do cost more when you go to the showroom and shop for them. But one of the things that even Zeldin’s EPA projected is that the amount of fuel you would save, the amount of money you would spend on maintenance and repair of your electric vehicle would produce more cost savings than you would spend initially.

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