by Jean Chemnick, Zack Colman, Alex Guillén, Timothy Cama
Greenwire
The recommendation by Lee Zeldin, the agency’s administrator, could upend existing and future regulations on climate change.
The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones.
Three people granted anonymity to discuss the action said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has recommended to the White House that the agency overhaul the finding, which underpins all Clean Air Act climate regulations.
The action, which was first reported by The Washington Post, represents President Donald Trump’s most aggressive action to date to wipe out the federal effort to combat climate change, which he has repeatedly labeled a “hoax” despite soaring global temperatures and the vast body of scientific evidence that it is fueling disasters around the globe…
“I think it’s the procedure they have to take,” said Steve Milloy, who worked on Trump’s first transition and is on the board of the Heartland Institute, an anti-climate advocacy group. “[H]opefully that will be done as quickly as possible.”
The Obama EPA spent eleven months developing the endangerment finding, and Milloy said it might take the Trump team longer than that. The first step, he said, would be for EPA to assemble new scientific advisory boards to replace the ones it disbanded last month.
