July 30, 2025 – Yesterday, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin proposed repealing the agency’s own finding that greenhouse gas emissions are contributing to climate change and therefore endanger human health and the environment.
Implemented in 2009 and called the “endangerment finding,” it gave the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Zeldin first announced in March that the EPA was considering the rollback.
In a press release that included praise from Republican lawmakers and the trucking industry, Zeldin focused on the fact that overturning the finding would allow the agency to repeal emissions standards that apply to cars and trucks, which he said would reduce costs for American consumers. “We heard loud and clear the concern that EPA’s greenhouse gas emissions standards themselves, not carbon dioxide which the finding never assessed independently, was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods,” he said.
The move drew immediate, harsh criticism from environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Environmental Protection Network (EPN). In a press release, EPN stated that the proposal threatens “every major federal climate protection adopted over the past 15 years.”
“By discarding the endangerment finding, EPA is surrendering its authority, deserting vulnerable communities and dismantling decades of progress,” said Michelle Roos, executive director of EPN. “The public health consequences will be immediate, widespread, and devastating.”
Those consequences include food production. There is broad scientific consensus that elevated emissions are already disrupting farmers’ ability to grow nutritious food in the U.S. and worldwide. The last report from the world’s top climate scientists found emissions are contributing to warming that is reducing yields, destroying crops, disrupting fisheries, and making it harder for livestock to survive. If emissions are not reduced, they found, those impacts will get worse.
The rollback could also jeopardize the EPA’s ability to regulate and reduce emissions from the food system, such as methane emissions from food waste in landfills and carbon dioxide emissions from food processing plants.
Further, the change is being implemented at a time when the EPA is cutting significant funding for projects that helped farmers and other food producers adapt to the changing climate and build resilience for what’s to come. (Link to this post.)
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