Trump EPA Sabotages Climate Action With Rollbacks of Tailpipe Rules, Endangerment Finding

President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency today rolled back tailpipe pollution standards and rescinded the landmark scientific finding that planet-heating pollution harms public health and welfare, which is a foundation of federal climate action.

Both the Biden EPA standards to reduce pollution from cars and trucks and the Obama EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding were based on overwhelming scientific evidence that has only become more robust. The proposals, if adopted, will create more pollution and lock in more damage to our air and climate in the future.

“This cynical one-two punch allows Trump’s Flat Earth EPA to slam the brakes on reducing auto pollution and ignore urgent warnings from the world’s leading scientists about the need for climate action,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign. “By revoking this key scientific finding Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people’s health. These proposals are a giant gift to oil companies that will do real damage to people, wildlife and future generations. The administration can’t even pretend the science facts have changed. It’s purely a political bow to the oil industry.”

Revoking life-saving clean air standards that slash auto pollution will allow automakers to make cars that guzzle more gas and pollute more. Rescinding the endangerment finding will make it harder for federal agencies to take steps that cut heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution from cars, trucks, power plants, factories and agriculture.

The administration falsely claims that U.S. pollution doesn’t matter. The United States is the second-largest carbon polluter in the world after China, and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses. The U.S. emitted 11% of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2021, and during Trump’s first term his administration admitted that emissions in excess of 3% were “significant.”

“This is the most pro-combustion administration since Nero. Trump is delivering higher gas pump sales to Big Oil and higher gas pump costs and unhealthy air to us and our kids,” said Becker. “To famous lies like ‘cigarettes don’t cause cancer,’ we can now add Trump’s claim that pollution from millions of cars is healthier than rules cleaning them up. Trump’s lies have serious consequences, and this one is far worse than taking a Sharpie to a hurricane map. Generations of Americans will suffer because of it.”

The vehicle rules Trump plans to scrap would cut 7 billion metric tons of emissions and saved the average American driver $6,000 in fuel and maintenance costs over the lifetimes of the vehicles made under the standards.

“The EPA is revoking the biggest single step any nation has taken to save oil, save consumers money at the pump and combat global warming. The Trump administration’s actions will worsen heart and lung disease, sicken kids with asthma, and stoke deadly wildfires, storms and floods,” Becker said. “It’s outrageous to justify this recklessness with the ridiculous claim that cutting planet-warming pollution is more expensive than the billions it will cost consumers at the pump and the hospital because of climate devastation. We’ll fight them every step of the way.”