The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will soon repeal the endangerment finding, a landmark rule which has allowed the agency to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The endangerment finding was established in Massachusetts v. EPA (2006), when a group of states sued the George W. Bush EPA for not regulating GHG emissions on new motor vehicles. The EPA argued that it did not have the statutory authority to do so. In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court ultimately sided with the states, ruling that the EPA could regulate GHG emissions under certain portions of the Clean Air Act, so long as the agency's administrator could determine these emissions "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." (A very low bar to prove.)
"While the ruling did not technically require the EPA to regulate such emissions, the Court did say that the agency would have to make a determination of 'whether greenhouse gas emissions contribute to climate change,' and, if so, proceed with appropriate regulations," explains Josiah Neeley, an energy scholar at the R Street Institute. "While not regulating anything itself, the endangerment finding thus became the necessary prerequisite for all subsequent regulations on GHGs issued by the EPA."
