Trump dumps emissions rule
US President Donald Trump has canned a scientific ruling that underpins national actions on limiting America’s greenhouse gases (GHGs).
The so-called 2009 “endangerment finding” states a range of GHGs are a threat to public health and has since become the legal bedrock of federal efforts to cut emissions, especially from vehicles.
The White House has described Trump’s decision as the “largest deregulation in American history”, saying it will make cars cheaper by reducing cost for manufacturers by US$2,400 – or about NZ$4,000 – per unit.
Speaking in the Oval Office last week, Trump described the 2009 ruling as “a disastrous Obama era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for consumers”.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first took a stance on the impacts of GHGs in 2009, the first year of Barack Obama’s first term as president. It decided that six key planet-warming gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, were a danger to human health.
With a divided Congress unable to agree on legislation to tackle rising global temperatures, the EPA finding became central to federal efforts to reduce pollution in the years that followed.
“The endangerment finding has served as the lynchpin of US regulation of GHGs,” says Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA attorney. “That includes motor vehicles, but it also power-plants, the oil and gas sector, methane from landfills and even aircraft.”
Trump administration officials are stressing that overturning the regulation will save more than US$1 trillion, and help cut the price of energy and transport. The US$2,400 savings per car is also a White House claim.
For some in the American automotive industry, there will be uncertainty about the decision as manufacturing less fuel-efficient vehicles might limit their sales overseas.
“This rollback is sort of cementing things that have already been done, such as the relaxation of the fuel-economy standards,” Michael Gerrard, a climate-law expert from Columbia University told the BBC. “But it really does put US automakers in a bind because nobody else is going to want to buy American cars.”
Trump says his repeal eliminates all GHGs standards for light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles as well as heavy-duty engines. EPA data from 2022 found transportation is the primary source of US GHGs. Passenger cars and light-duty trucks make up more than half of transport emissions in the country.
