Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks during the signing of the memorandum of understanding between U.S. and Mexico to achieve a permanent solution to the decades-old Tijuana River sewage crisis, in Mexico City, Mexico July 24, 2025. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha
The Environmental Protection Agency, led by longtime ally to President Donald Trump Lee Zeldin, announced Tuesday that the agency is moving to end all regulations that limit greenhouse gas emissions, and in effect, drive “a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion,” CNN reported.
Specifically, the EPA announced its intention to reverse the 2009 “endangerment finding,” a legal opinion that serves as the basis for regulations limiting the emissions of greenhouse gases. By reversing the standard, experts warn that the effects could be devastating for the environment.
“This is not just an attack on science but on common sense,” said Zealan Hoover, a former senior advisor with the EPA, speaking with The Washington Post.
“The National Climate Assessment provides over 2,000 pages of detailed evidence that climate change harms our health and welfare, but you can also ask the millions of Americans who have lost their homes and livelihoods to extreme fires, floods, and storms that are only getting worse.”
Speaking at an event in Indianapolis on Tuesday, Zeldin called the announcement the “largest deregulatory action" in the history of the United States. He also discounted the scientific consensus around climate change as “oversimplified” and “inaccurate” while appearing on the conservative podcast “Ruthless” the same day.
Many business leaders agree with Zeldin, such as Diana Furchtgott-Roth with the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, who told The Washington Post on Tuesday that the endangerment finding standard was “a very expensive" regulation. John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group that represents automakers, said that eliminating the standard would help “keep the auto industry in America competitive.”
Were the EPA to follow through with its proposal, automakers and energy producers would be largely unrestricted in the level of emissions their products and facilities produce, something that some experts warn could be catastrophic, particularly for Americans in more disaster-prone areas.
“You’re asking the American people who are living through wildfires, floods, hurricanes, heat domes and so on, not to believe what they’re going through, not to believe their own eyes,” said David Doniger, senior attorney at the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, speaking with The Washington Post.
“At some point what they’re claiming is going to appear to people to be mind bogglingly false, and out of touch.”