Environmentalists, AGs vow to fight Trump over cutting key climate change rule
Reprinted from Inside Climate News Feb. 12, 2026
By Kiley Bense
The Trump administration moved today to overturn a key legal foundation of the federal government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases. In a press conference at the White House, President Donald Trump hailed the move as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history.”
The 2009 endangerment finding forms a cornerstone for the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from sectors like motor vehicles and power plants. The finding stems from a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, that held that greenhouse gases should be considered air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The finding states that “current or projected concentrations” of these gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”
(Editor’s Note: The PA Department of Environmental Protection reacted negatively to the Trump Administration’s move, sending this letter to the EPA that it had sent last September when the rule change was first proposed.)
“This action will eliminate over $1.3 trillion of regulatory cost and help bring car prices tumbling down dramatically,” Trump said. “You can get a better car. You can get a car that starts easier, a car that works better for a lot less money.” While electric vehicles tend to cost more than gasoline-powered cars upfront, they generally cost consumers less over the lifetime of the vehicle. And the impacts of climate change are associated with increasing costs for government, businesses and homeowners.
Trump called the endangerment finding a “radical rule” with “no basis in fact” and “no basis in law.” But scientific and legal evidence supporting the EPA’s conclusions in the endangerment finding is well-established, experts say. Even supporters of the repeal acknowledge that it is likely to trigger a sustained backlash that could mean years of lawsuits, state action and activist campaigns.
In the wake of Trump’s announcement, lawyers from environmental groups across the country promised to challenge the repeal.
“We will see them in court,” said Marvin Brown, senior attorney at Earthjustice. “This is an affront to not only our public health, but also an affront to our future and to basic science and basic scientific principles.”
The Sierra Club’s Andres Restrepo, senior attorney for the organization’s environmental law program, said the EPA’s move was “an attempt at an end run around the Supreme Court’s decision from almost 20 years ago.” Restrepo said the Sierra Club intended to challenge the repeal in court. The Natural Resources Defense Council released a statement today that they too would join the fight against EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s determination.
The body of research showing how rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere impact severe weather and the fundamental stability of the planet’s climate has only grown more substantial since 2009, said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. “We knew the basic science [of global warming] in 1896,” he said. “That really hasn’t changed.”
Scientists’ knowledge about how greenhouse gases affect hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, flooding and agricultural productivity becomes more detailed every year. The government’s decision today is “not based on science,” Howarth said. “It’s a predetermined political decision.”
During the press conference, Zeldin accused the Obama and Biden administrations of using “legal gymnastics” to “back door their ideological agendas on the American people.”
PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons/Janak Bhatta
