On July 29, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the Trump administration’s plan to rescind the Endangerment Finding, the landmark scientific declaration that greenhouse gases harm human health and the environment.
The 2009 declaration is the legal and scientific basis for nearly every federal climate regulation. Repealing it would prevent future administrations from limiting harmful pollution from cars, trucks, power plants, factories, and other industries under the Clean Air Act.
The Clean Air Act has been highly successful in terms of public health and economic growth, saving millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Emissions of the most common pollutants such as methane and carbon dioxide have fallen by about 80% since its 1970 passage under President Richard Nixon.
Rescinding the Endangerment Finding would erase all current limits on harmful emissions, including Biden-era limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage the manufacture and sale of electric vehicles. Transportation is the country’s largest contributor to greenhouse gas pollution.
What are the health risks of rescinding the Endangerment Finding?
It is “beyond scientific dispute” that greenhouse gases harm human health. This is backed by even stronger evidence now than in 2009, when the Endangerment Finding published over 200 pages detailing how these emissions drive more severe heat waves, wildfires, storms, floods, and droughts.
Wildfires have become more frequent, intense, and destructive in the past couple decades, with “individual lives, homes and businesses paying the price.” This is especially true in California. The January 2025 wildfires in Pasadena and Eaton ranked “among the deadliest and most destructive fires in California history,” and were fueled by “fire-friendly climate conditions.”
Extreme weather and heat harm crops and contaminate the water supply, causing a range of health complications related to nutrition, immunity, antimicrobial resistance, kidney disease, mental health, and pregnancy. Exposure to smoke and air pollutants can also cause reduced lung function, asthma, heart attacks, heart failure, stroke, cancers, and death.
What are the economic risks?
New research projects that climate change will raise the cost of living over a lifetime by about $255,000 in 2024 dollars if humanity “does not act swiftly” to limit greenhouse gas emissions. On average, a child born in 2024 will lose $500,000 to $1 million from increased expenses and reduced earnings.
The largest expenses are housing and energy-related, including electricity, gas, maintenance, home and auto insurance, and transportation. Warmer temperatures are also expected to disrupt food production and increase retail prices.
American automakers have raised concerns about falling behind in the global EV market, causing higher consumer prices and a loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Trump already ended the $7,500 EV consumer tax credit, which researchers warn could destabilize the economy “as the country competes with China and Europe for the future of energy and transportation jobs—key drivers of the economy’s national security.”
Tesla, the nation’s largest EV seller, urged the Trump administration to preserve the Endangerment Finding since it is “lawful, based on a robust factual and scientific record, and has been an established part of federal law for more than fifteen years.”