President Trump erases key EPA greenhouse gas regulations
The Trump administration has officially rescinded the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark endangered status certification.
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California will co-lead a coalition challenging President Donald Trump’s administration’s recent decision to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark climate findings targeting greenhouse gases.
Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced on March 19 that the state of California, along with 25 attorneys general, the governor of Pennsylvania, and 10 cities and counties, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration over the EPA’s recent decision to rescind the EPA’s “hazard finding,” which has been the legal basis for regulations targeting man-made greenhouse gases for nearly two decades.
“We are challenging the Trump administration’s unlawful decision to roll back one of our nation’s most important climate programs,” Bonta said at a news conference. “The federal government is trying to overturn science and eliminate protections that limit harmful pollution from vehicles, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases.”
In 2009, the Obama administration’s EPA released its Endangerment Findings, which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a significant threat to public health and contribute to worsening environmental conditions. These findings served as the basis for passage of the Clean Air Act, which imposed emission standards on cars, trucks, and power plants.
In announcing the decision, President Trump argued that rescinding these environmental protections would ultimately help Americans by starting to “fall” in car costs, and that the study’s findings had no “factual basis.”
On February 12, President Trump said, “We are officially ending so-called ‘risk finding,’ a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry.”
The president described this moment as “the greatest deregulatory move in American history.”
EPA’s action to reverse the 2009 findings would ultimately eliminate the federal government’s ability to enforce environmental protections against greenhouse gas pollution from cars and trucks.
“This is not a small technical change. This is a sweeping decision that will increase pollution, exacerbate climate change, and endanger the health of millions of Americans,” Bonta said at a news conference.
“Greenhouse gas emissions will increase because the federal government is stepping back from its role in properly regulating greenhouse gases.”
Newsom: “President Trump’s decision will hurt America and boost China’s EVs”
When President Trump announced his decision to reverse the EPA’s findings, Newsom vowed to sue. This week, he did not hold back from criticizing the president’s actions.
“Since 2009, we’ve known the obvious: Greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (and) methane, are negatively impacting our public health and our nation’s economic prosperity,” Newsom said. “The only people who can see it differently are Donald Trump and his big donors.”
Newsom said that before the creation of the EPA and policies to address smog and pollution in the state, greenhouse gases played a significant role in the poor air quality that has affected Californians for decades.
“Los Angeles was almost uninhabitable, and it could happen again,” Newsom said. “They want to make the pollution serious again. That’s the problem.”
He also emphasized that the EPA’s loosening of regulations and greenhouse gas emissions policies could hurt modern Californians as the state faces an increase in natural disasters due to climate change.
“They want to recreate the 19th century. California is about the future. We’re about transformation, not restoration. We’re not about nostalgia. We’re not second-guessing fools,” Newsom said. “We have been here before, and our action is not to be victims or bystanders of this attack on common sense, science, public health, and lived reality, but to seek to shape the future.”
Notably, California Environmental Protection Secretary Yana Garcia said that while President Trump’s decision affected federal policy, it did not affect the state’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2006, the California General Assembly passed AB 32 (California Global Warming Mitigation Act of 2006), requiring businesses to participate in significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state to 1990 levels by 2020.
“AB 32 remains unchanged,” Garcia said. “California Air Resources Board, we are advancing our climate change program. We remain steadfastly committed to protecting public health.”
One of President Trump’s main justifications for rescinding the EPA findings was that the agency would help the U.S. auto industry by eliminating federal regulations.
Newsom argued that the decision could ultimately have a negative impact on the U.S. auto market because the federal government is discouraging U.S. automakers from developing electric vehicles in favor of gasoline-powered vehicles.
By contrast, Newsom said the United States is being “left behind,” pointing to Beijing’s investment in the electric vehicle industry, which has become a major player in the global market.
Earlier this year, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney agreed to a plan with China to begin importing EVs into the North American market, where imports have been blocked for years by a tariff agreement with the United States.
Noe Padilla is a Northern California reporter for USA Today. To contact him, npadilla@usatodayco.comX Follow him at @1NoePadilla or Bluesky @noepadilla.bsky.social..
