Padilla, Colleagues Demand Withdrawal of Endangerment Finding Rollback That Will Accelerate the Climate Crisis

"This proposed action represents an abdication of EPA's duty, a violation of Supreme Court precedent and Congressional directive, and a blatant failure to protect the American people," wrote all 47 Democratic Senators

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, joined EPW Ranking Member Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and the entire Democratic Caucus in demanding the Trump Administration withdraw its factually inaccurate and legally deficient proposed rollback of the endangerment finding.

The rollback, if finalized, would constitute a formal denial by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare - a position that defies decades of scientific evidence, agency precedent, and Supreme Court rulings. The 47 Senators called the repeal of the climate and public health protection a "dereliction of duty" and a "blatant failure to protect the American people."

The endangerment finding is a 2009 scientific determination by EPA that greenhouse gases harm public health and welfare and is the legal basis for U.S. climate policy. It is grounded in extensive peer-reviewed science and confirmed by successive National Climate Assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Twice, EPA's scientific finding has withstood challenge at the D.C. Circuit, and both times, the Supreme Court declined to revisit the decision. Repealing the endangerment finding would ignore overwhelming scientific evidence and set the stage for rolling back air quality standards for power plants, airplanes, and more, making it easier to pollute.

"Scientists, financial experts, international governments, and the American public agree that climate change is a looming crisis. Greenhouse-gas driven climate change is driving extreme weather, flooding, erosion, sea-level rise, heat waves, drought, catastrophic wildfires, famine, smog pollution, and other disasters. These effects drive illness, hospital visits, and deaths, as well as displacement, asset loss, infrastructure damage, rising insurance premiums, declining home values, and long-term destabilization of the national economy. … And yet, in this proposal, EPA proposes to abdicate all responsibility to address this dangerous pollution," wrote the Senators.

"Congress established the Clean Air Act to protect the public health and welfare, and the Supreme Court confirmed that this includes EPA's obligation to regulate greenhouse gases to the extent they endanger the same. The science is clear that they do so. We ask that you withdraw this proposal and reverse your decision to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding," continued the Senators.

Not only do EPA's actions fail to protect the American public from well-documented harms, but the agency's justifications "are directly at odds with Supreme Court precedent, Congressional directive, and the facts." In Massachusetts v. EPA, the Supreme Court deemed that carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons were air pollutants under Clean Air Act "without a doubt," calling it "unambiguous."

To justify the repeal, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has relied on a Department of Energy pseudoscientific report written by known climate deniers with close ties to fossil fuel and polluting industry actors. Rife with clear errors, cherry-picked data, and misrepresented facts, the report peddles the lie that human-caused climate change is not a threat. But scientists have known since the 19th century that greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans drive climate change and accelerate global warming.

In addition to Padilla, Whitehouse, and Schumer, the letter was signed by the entire Senate Democratic Caucus, including Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Angus King (I-Maine), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

Senator Padilla has been outspoken in underscoring the catastrophic environmental consequences of the Trump Administration's attempts to reverse the endangerment finding. Last week, Padilla joined Representative Mike Levin (D-Calif.-49), Senator Schiff, and 41 other members of California's Democratic Congressional Delegation in calling on EPA to keep the endangerment finding in place. Yesterday, Padilla, Senator Markey, and nine other Senators urged Zeldin to reverse course on the elimination of federal standards for greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars and medium and heavy-duty trucks, which was enabled by EPA's proposal to undermine the underlying finding that greenhouse emissions threaten our health and welfare by contributing to climate change. Padilla and all other EPW Committee Democrats demanded answers about Zeldin's secretive efforts earlier this year to roll back the longstanding EPA endangerment finding.

Full text of the Democratic caucus' letter to Administrator Zeldin is available here and below:

Dear Administrator Zeldin:

We write in united opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s proposal to rescind its 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations (the "endangerment finding"). This proposed action represents an abdication of EPA's duty, a violation of Supreme Court precedent and Congressional directive, and a blatant failure to protect the American people.

In 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius concluded that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities contribute to a global "greenhouse effect", driving global warming. One hundred and twenty-nine years later, the reality of human-caused climate change is not up for debate. Scientists, financial experts, international governments, and the American public agree that climate change is a looming crisis. Greenhouse-gas driven climate change is driving extreme weather, flooding, erosion, sea-level rise, heat waves, drought, catastrophic wildfires, famine, smog pollution and other disasters. These effects drive illness, hospital visits, and deaths, as well as displacement, asset loss, infrastructure damage, rising insurance premiums, declining home values, and long-term destabilization of the national economy. The United Nations considers greenhouse gas-driven climate change a "global emergency." The United States Department of Defense has called greenhouse gas-driven climate change a "threat multiplier" whose destabilizing effects can "enable terrorist activity and other forms of violence." The United States emits over eleven percent of all greenhouse gas emitted by all 195 countries in the world, and has emitted over 400 billion tons of carbon dioxide since 1750, by far the most of any country. And yet, in this proposal, EPA proposes to abdicate all responsibility to address this dangerous pollution.

Apart from being a dereliction of duty, EPA's action here is one of breathtaking hubris: the agency presents a series of alternative arguments defending its proposal, all of which are directly at odds with Supreme Court precedent, Congressional directive, and the facts.

First, EPA argues that the Clean Air Act is ambiguous as to whether the EPA may "regulate… GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions in response to global climate change concerns," and that this issue constitutes a "major question". The agency further argues that in light of the Supreme Court's decisions in Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which overturned the doctrine of Chevron deference, and West Virginia v. EPA, which formalized the concept of a major questions doctrine, the agency may not regulate GHGs absent a clear statement authorizing such action. But Massachusetts v. EPA, the controlling Supreme Court case on EPA greenhouse gas regulation, left no room for ambiguity: the Court in that case found that "[c]arbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and hydrofluorocarbons are without a doubt" air pollutants under the Clean Air Act's definition, and that "[t]he statute is unambiguous" on this point.

Willfully blind to this clear legal precedent, EPA argues that the term "air pollutant", as employed throughout the Clean Air Act, refers to those pollutants that "cause or contribute to air pollution for which the air pollution itself, through local or regional exposure to humans and the environment, endangers public health or welfare." This argument that EPA may regulate only air pollutants with direct local impacts on human health ignores both Supreme Court directive and the plain text of the statute itself. The Clean Air Act does not exclusively or even primarily address pollution on a local basis: programs like the interstate air pollution program and the national ambient air quality standards program specifically address pollution that transcends local and regional borders. Other programs, including mobile source regulation under section 202, are even broader, directing EPA to address "any air pollution" with deleterious impacts on "public health or welfare." Notably, "welfare" is defined to include not only economic and ecological wellbeing but also specifically "effects on…weather…and climate"-a point that the Supreme Court highlighted in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The Massachusetts Court agreed that under the clear terms of the Act, climate pollution is subject to EPA regulation. The Court wrote, "[u]nder the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid [making an endangerment finding] only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do." Furthermore, the Court declared, "[i]f EPA makes a finding of endangerment, the Clean Air Act requires the Agency to regulate emissions of the deleterious pollutant" under section 202(a). In refusing to make an endangerment finding, the Court held, the EPA then, as now, "refused to comply with [a] clear statutory command."

Moreover, Congress has contemplated tackling climate change under the Clean Air Act since the 1970s. The Act's Statement of Purpose, noting the "mounting dangers" that air pollution poses to the "public health and welfare," declares that the "purpose" of the Act is to protect the same. As noted above, "welfare" includes effects on weather and climate. Since Massachusetts, Congress has confirmed the Court's interpretation by passing legislation affirming that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Act, and authorizing programs to address this pollution.

Finally, in addition to its legal arguments, EPA suggests that the endangerment finding was based on faulty science, and that "the projections [the finding] relied upon…appear unduly pessimistic in light of empirical observations made after it was finalized in 2009 through 2024." In making this argument, EPA relies upon a report solicited and published by Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright and written in less than two months by professional climate skeptics with established ties to the fossil-fuel industry. EPA's arguments, and those of the report's authors, are unavailing. Climate science developed since 2009 only suggests more dire implications than were reflected in the agency's 2009 findings. As reported by the World Meteorological Organization in 2023, the rate of climate change "surged alarmingly" between 2011 and 2021. During this decade-the hottest ever recorded-sea level rise accelerated, ocean heat and acidification increased, and extreme weather increased in frequency and intensity. In its Sixth Climate Assessment in 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the "evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a grave and mounting threat to human wellbeing and the health of the planet." The IPCC further warned that "[a]ny further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future." It is also worth dispensing with EPA's argument that because the endangerment finding did not consider our capacity to adapt to a rapidly shifting climate-which could include migration and projects such as sea walls and pumps-the finding itself should be discredited. This is tantamount to suggesting that EPA can set weaker standards for air pollution by assuming the public could wear gas masks.

Congress established the Clean Air Act to protect the public health and welfare, and the Supreme Court confirmed that this includes EPA's obligation to regulate greenhouse gases to the extent they endanger the same. The science is clear that they do so. We ask that you withdraw this proposal and reverse your decision to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding.

Sincerely,

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