An EPA rule change threatens to gut US climate regulations

The proposed rule will go up for public comment, and the agency will then take that feedback and come up with a final version. It’ll almost certainly get hit with legal challenges and will likely wind up in front of the Supreme Court.

One note here is that the EPA makes a mostly legal argument in the proposed rule reversal rather than focusing on going after the science of climate change, says Madison Condon, an associate law professor at Boston University. That could make it easier for the Supreme Court to eventually uphold it, she says, though this whole process is going to take a while. 

If the endangerment finding goes down, it would have wide-reaching ripple effects. “We could find ourselves in a couple years with no legal tools to try and address climate change,” Sivas says.

To take a step back for a moment, it’s wild that we’ve ended up in this place where a single rule is so central to regulating emissions. US climate policy is held up by duct tape and a dream. Congress could have, at some point, passed a law that more directly allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions (the last time we got close was a 2009 bill that passed the House but never made it to the Senate). But here we are.

This move isn’t a surprise, exactly. The Trump administration has made it very clear that it is going after climate policy in every way that it can. But what’s most striking to me is that we’re not operating in a shared reality anymore when it comes to this subject. 

While top officials tend to acknowledge that climate change is real, there’s often a “but” followed by talking points from climate denial’s list of greatest hits. (One of the more ridiculous examples is the statement that carbon dioxide is good, actually, because it helps plants.) 

Climate change is real, and it’s a threat. And the US has emitted more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country in the world. It shouldn’t be controversial to expect the government to be doing something about it. 

This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.