The Environmental Protection Agency scrapped the agency’s landmark 2009 global warming “endangerment finding,” breaking with the long-standing scientific consensus that global warming poses a risk to human health. The finding played a critical role in regulating greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. The transportation sector accounted for 28 percent of all U.S. emissions in 2022.
“As EPA Administrator, I am proud to deliver the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers," said Lee Zeldin, head of the EPA on Thursday at a White House event alongside U.S. president Donald Trump. The move also ends mileage credits for "stop-start" technologies in idling cars that boost fuel economy around 4 percent.
The consequences of the decision will go far beyond rolling back Biden-era laws to boost fuel efficiency and limit emissions for gasoline-burning cars and trucks, experts have said.
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"Ramming through this unlawful, destructive action at the behest of polluters is an obvious example of what happens when a corrupt administration and fossil fuel interests are allowed to run amok," said Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement. "Sacrificing people’s health, safety and futures for polluters’ profits is unconscionable."
The EPA established the endangerment finding in 2009, following a Supreme Court decision two years before, Massachusetts v. EPA, that allowed the EPA to set limits on greenhouse gases as air pollution under the Clean Air Act. At the time, the EPA held that greenhouse gas emissions threatened human health through increased drought, famine, extreme weather, damage to crops and sea-level rise, along with the other myriad ill effects of climate warming reported by scientists.
“Denying climate change and it's causes is no different than denying gravity," said Democratic Representative Sean Casten of Illinois, in a social media post. " It is an argument made by idiots. It does not change the laws of nature, but when used to change the laws of the country, people will die."
The Trump administration began steps to end the endangerment finding in 2025 as part of a broad rollback of government action on climate change. A July 2025 Department of Energy report, written by a team of longtime climate change critics, helped bolster the effort despite a lengthy review by more than 85 climate scientists that argued the report had largely botched the climate science. Later public record releases from the agency showed that internal DOE reviewers had found parts of the report “misleading” and “not factual” in their own review.
The decision to rescind the endangerment finding could face challenges in court, and may eventually wind up in front of the Supreme Court. The current Court has appeared amenable to arguments in favor of the oil and gas industry, as seen in the 2022 West Virginia v. EPA decision, which limited the agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
Editor’s Note (2/12/26): This story was updated to include comments from Zeldin, Goldman and Casten made on Thursday.
