Fueling The Conversation, Week of August 18th, 2025
For 15 years, the federal government has either enacted or attempted to enact a host of regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere. These include regulations on motor vehicles, power plants, refineries, oil and natural gas production platforms, and other types of manufacturing. Given the level of attention paid to these and other climate-related policies, you could reasonably assume that Congress gave the executive branch the express authority to regulate GHGs. But you would be wrong.
The truth is that the regulation of GHGs has been pursued based on an overly broad reading of the Clean Air Act and a rather narrow interpretation of the climate impacts of GHGs.
In a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, Massachusetts v. EPA, the Court found that GHGs qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, though many at the time, and to this day, view it as a capacious interpretation of what it means for a substance to be an air pollutant. This was a landmark decision, as it required the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine whether GHGs endanger public health or welfare.
Following the ruling, the Obama EPA stated that “current and projected concentrations (of GHGs)…in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” Known as the Endangerment Finding, the Obama administration used this finding to push out a host of regulations aimed at curbing emissions, primarily from coal, oil, and natural gas.
After declining to alter the finding in President Trump’s first term, the EPA is now moving to rescind it. The significance of this move should not be understated; both the Obama and Biden administrations relied on the Endangerment Finding as the basis for their clean power and motor vehicles plans, which sought to force power plants and automobile manufacturers to cut GHG emissions to unreachable levels.
The justification for the repeal of the finding for motor vehicles can be summarized in the Trump EPA’s March press release:
Congress tasked EPA under Section 202 of the Clean Air Act with regulating new motor vehicles when the Administrator determines that emissions of an air pollutant endanger public health and welfare. But the Endangerment Finding went about this task in what appears to be a flawed and unorthodox way. Contrary to popular belief, the Endangerment Finding did not directly find that carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. cars endanger public welfare. Instead, the Finding looks at a combination of emissions of six different gases—and cars don’t even omit all six. It then creatively added multiple leaps, arguing that the combined six gases contribute some mysterious amount above zero to climate change and that climate change creates some mysterious amount of endangerment above zero to public health. These mental leaps were the only way the Obama-Biden Administration could come to its preferred conclusion, even if it did not stick to the letter of the Clean Air Act.
To accompany the EPA’s rescission, the Department of Energy released a report reviewing the effect GHG emissions have on the U.S.’s climate. In the report’s forward, Energy Secretary Chris Wright explains the motivation behind the research, stating that “media coverage often distorts the science.” The report’s findings back up this claim: “Both models and experience suggest that CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and excessively aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial.”
While the Clean Air Act does require the EPA to regulate air pollutants from vehicles that threaten health and welfare, GHGs were never explicitly classified as a pollutant by Congress. By their very nature, GHGs aren’t pollutants because they are well-mixed in the atmosphere, naturally occurring, and, in most cases, non-toxic to humans. Even the late Michigan Congressman John Dingell, one of the original authors of the Clean Air Act, acknowledged the error in judgment of the Supreme Court in issuing the Endangerment Finding, stating, “we didn’t clarify it, thinking the Supreme Court was not stupid enough to make that finding.”
It’s clear that regulating GHG emissions does little to improve “public health and welfare.” The climate change argument for keeping the Endangerment Finding isn’t as strong as its supporters presume. Claims of harm from GHGs are based on far-out projections of climatic impacts, such as rising sea levels and heat waves, that fail to incorporate future improvements in technology that will allow us to adapt to these impacts.
In attempting to repeal the finding, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin cited the substantial costs GHG regulations pose on Americans and declared that the repeal would save $54 billion annually. This level of savings shouldn’t be surprising when considering the fact that natural gas, oil, and coal serve as inputs for the goods and services we depend on, including plastics, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals. Drastically increasing the costs of these fossil fuel-based goods and services through regulation will reduce the quality and availability of the products that allow us to live healthy and prosperous lives.
It’s safe to say that a world without fossil fuels would be more dangerous. Despite the catastrophizing rhetoric of green groups, deaths from disasters across the world have been decreasing over the same period that GHG emissions have increased.
The decrease in deaths from disasters highlights the fact that lives are saved by increasing global wealth, not by reducing GHG emissions. Since much of this wealth comes from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas, attempting to decrease GHG emissions by regulating these conventional energies could lead to more deaths than otherwise.
Additionally, the warming that results from increased carbon dioxide emissions has some positive effects that the Endangerment Finding ignores. According to one estimate, a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would increase green plant growth by 40%. If the holistic effects of increased GHG emissions are not acknowledged, an accurate assessment of whether or not they pose a danger cannot be made.
Clearly, the Endangerment Finding is due for repeal. It has been used as a tool to justify an anti-energy agenda that has raised energy costs for American families. If Congress wants the executive branch to regulate GHGs, it should pass legislation to do just that. By repealing the Endangerment Finding, the Trump administration is simply following that law.
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Fueling the Conversation, a weekly column by IER President Tom Pyle, offers a principled take on energy events. Energy underpins all aspects of modern life, so policies that artificially limit production hurt everyday people paying to heat their homes and drive to work. “Green” groups push these policies for ideological reasons, but this column uses economic logic and hard facts to advocate for energy freedom.
