Washington, D.C. – In response to the Trump Administration’s announcement today that it is proposing to overturn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health, and therefore must be regulated under the federal Clean Air Act, the Environmental Integrity Project issued the following statement:
“The Trump EPA is ignoring decades of established science and attempting a back-door maneuver to avoid its legal responsibilities to tackle the most critically important issue of our time: climate change,” said David Bookbinder, Director of Law and Policy at the Environmental Integrity Project.
“Because this approach has already been rejected by the courts – and doubtless will be again – this baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day,” Bookbinder said.
Bookbinder was one of the lead attorneys in the 2007 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Massachusetts vs. EPA, that established that the EPA has the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the federal Clean Air Act. EPA’s subsequent decision in 2009, the “endangerment finding,” concluded that the agency should regulate these pollutants because they endanger public health.
For a EPA’s press release on the proposal to overturn the “endangerment finding,” click here.
The Environmental Integrity Project is America’s environmental watchdog. We hold polluters and governments accountable to protect public health and the environment.
Media contact: Tom Pelton, Environmental Integrity Project (443) 510-2574 or tpelton@environmetnalintegrity.org
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