The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and climate laws are now being significantly curtailed by the Trump administration
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was formed in 1970 and according to its Website, “the mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment,” It also states that central to its work is the view that “Environmental stewardship is integral to U.S. policies concerning natural resources, human health, economic growth, energy, transportation, agriculture, industry, and international trade, and these factors are similarly considered in establishing environmental policy.” The website also claims that “develop and enforce regulations…[and] study [of] environmental issues” are important parts of its work.
In 2009, during the Obama Administration, the EPA released what is called the ‘Endangerment Findings’ report and according to an article by Earth.org it “determined that six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, threaten public health and welfare for current and future generations. As such, it provided the basis for the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions through mechanisms such as emission controls on vehicles and power plants.” The report, the article says, was ‘peer-reviewed,’ meaning it was co-produced and approved by other departments with shared interests, “the peer-reviewed report was developed by 31 climate experts and verified by federal expert reviewers hailing from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and other agencies.”
The Endangerment Findings of the EPA probably laid the basis on which the Barack Obama administration could later pass climate and environmental laws including the signing of the Paris Agreement, and it may not be far fetched to assume, that the EPA findings may have induced many other countries to follow suit. During the the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations the EPA passed many regulations restricting greenhouse gas emissions, protecting the air and water, and curtailing oil and gas explorations, among other things. For example, in 2013 the ‘Climate Action Plan’ encompassed the Obama administration’s climate initiatives and as part of those initiatives, the ‘Clean Power Plan’ (CPP) was passed in 2015. A publication by Obamawhitehouse.archives.gov says “in August 2015, we established the Clean Power Plan — the first-ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants, protecting the health of our children and working toward a 32 percent reduction in carbon pollution by 2030,” and “Power plants are the largest major source of emissions in the U.S., together accounting for roughly one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas pollution.” It was in the following year (November 2016) that the United States became officially a member of the Paris Agreement. The Agreement acknowledges that the use of fossil fuels, (oil, gas, coal, etc.), by humans are responsible for major greenhouse gas emissions, (carbon dioxide, methane, etc.), into the atmosphere which are now largely responsible for triggering climate change events like heatwaves, droughts, floods, wildfires, sea level rise, and coral reefs destruction, among other things. The Paris Agreement, through the United Nations (UN), legally binds about 194 signing members to its theory of the climate effects of greenhouse gases and has laid out a roadmap for global adaptation and mitigation initiatives.
Donald trump succeeded Barack Obama as President of the United States and regularly railed against the concept of climate change and its related policies, even before he became President. His term in office began in January 2017, and he submitted to the UN a notice of withdraw from the Paris Agreement in August of that same year. However, according to UN policies, a country has to be an official member of the Agreement for at least three years before it can seek a withdrawal and if a country applies after three years the actual withdrawal would only become effective a year after that. Because of those rules, the Trump Administration’s withdrawal was effective in November 2020, a couple months before he left office. In the meantime the Administration was busy reversing major Obama climate initiatives. For example, many anti-fossil fuel laws were reversed with a regulation called “The America First Energy Plan: Renewing the Confidence of American Energy Producers.” The Atlantic Council in a publication on August 17, 2017, says “US energy policy is poised for a drastic reversal. The Clean Power Plan is giving way to the America First Energy Plan, as President Donald Trump take steps to unwind Barack Obama–era clean energy initiatives, strip US energy policy of environmental and climate concerns, and focus solely on two priorities: producing low-cost energy and creating American jobs.” It also goes on to say “President Trump has pledged to reignite the US coal industry and expand domestic fossil fuel production. His administration and congressional allies plan to roll back regulations, open hundreds of millions of acres of federal land to coal, oil, and gas exploration, and cut federal funding for climate and environmental programs.”
President Biden succeeded President Trump in office in January 2021, and reinstated the US involvement in the United Nations climate change efforts as well as again becoming a signatory to the Paris Agreement. The new Administration passed the ‘Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’ in 2021 and the ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ in 2022. According to the World Resources Institute “the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes major investments in carbon capture and sequestration and clean hydrogen production and use. These investments could go a long way in demonstrating methods to decarbonize emissions-intensive industrial subsectors” and “the Biden administration’s most important climate action to date was signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August 2022, the most comprehensive climate legislation the U.S. has even seen. The law invests hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy, electric vehicles, environmental justice and more.”
Donald Trump succeeded Joe Biden and became President for the second time, in January 2025, and is again attempting to eradicate laws that were put in place to address climate change issues.. First, the administration (again) withdrew from the Paris Agreement and from the UN climate organizations that are focusing on climate adaptation and mitigation. The withdrawal became official on January 27, 2026, one year after the application was made, as per the UN requirement. As The Guardian tells it, in a March 12, 2025 article, the “Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an extraordinary cavalcade of pollution rule rollbacks on Wednesday, led by the announcement it would potentially scrap a landmark 2009 finding by the US government that planet-heating gases, such carbon dioxide, pose a threat to human health,” and that “Donald Trump’s administration is to reconsider the official finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to public health, a move that threatens to rip apart the foundation of the US’s climate laws, amid a stunning barrage of actions to weaken or repeal a host of pollution limits upon power plants, cars and waterways,” this latter part is in reference to the 2009 ‘Endangerment Findings’ of the EPA, discussed earlier.
A publication by NBC News on February 12, 2026, makes clear that what The Guardian said was coming, is now a reality, “President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories…the repeal of that landmark determination, known as the endangerment finding, will upend most U.S. policies aimed at curbing climate change.”
Climate and environmental interests are suing the EPA and the Trump administration to rescind the repeal of the Endangerment Findings. The Court’s decision is pending. Alarmed by President Trump’s unrelenting effort to eradicate climate change efforts, a group of State Governors, during Trump’s first presidency in 2017, formed the ‘U.S. Climate Alliance.’ Through this alliance the States themselves have been participating in UN climate programs and legislating against greenhouse gases on their own, regardless of what the Federal Government is doing. The website of the U.S. Climate Alliance says, “launched in 2017 by the governors of Washington, New York, and California, the Alliance now includes governors from 24 states and territories, representing approximately 55% of the U.S. population, and 60% of the U.S. economy,” and the “alliance members are working to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement through four key commitments.”
The first of the four commitments is geared toward the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the second addresses climate adaptation and clean energy promotion, the third concerns environmental issues and implementation of climate policies in a way that is beneficial to the economy. The forth commitment is rather vague, but it seems that the Alliance is declaring its intention to abide by the requirements of the Paris Agreement by submitting progress reports on its climate policies to the UN when they are due and participate generally in COP annual conferences. The Paris Agreement and COP are discussed elsewhere.
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