Sept. 14 (UPI) — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that it will end rules that limit the power-plant emissions that cause climate change, ending a policy that the EPA once estimated could save thousands of lives.
The agency also plans to argue that greenhouse gases do not endanger human health or the environment, so it does not have the authority to regulate their emission through the Clean Air Act, The New York Times reported. If courts uphold this idea, future administrations may not be able to restore the rules.
“For over 15 years, the Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy,” said Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, in a statement Monday during a Group of 20 energy ministers. “The Trump administration has come in to protect American energy and make sure you can afford to keep the lights on.”
The EPA said repealing the Biden-era emissions standards would save $310 billion over roughly 20 years, The Washington Post reported. In 2014, Biden officials said the standards would bring $370 billion in climate and public health benefits.
President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax,” and his administration has focused on fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal for energy, including increasing needs from AI data centers. Power plants make the biggest U.S. industrial contribution to climate change.
Extracting and burning these fuels creates greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, which are major contributors to climate change and air pollution, the World Health Organization said. Climate change affects overall temperatures around the world and can make weather events more extreme.
U.S. agencies such as NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration still acknowledge climate change and its dangers on their websites.
“There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate,” NASA said on its “climate change” page. “Human activity is the principal cause.”
Environmental groups have said they’ll challenge the move in court, as did Letitia James, New York’s attorney general.
“The federal administration’s decision to eliminate limits on climate pollution from power plants is catastrophic,” James said in a social media post. “These are some of our nation’s most essential climate policies. We will take action to protect them.”
Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the EPA “is ending its legal and moral responsibility to end climate pollution.”
“This is another nail in the coffin for this administration’s commitment to protecting people and tackling the climate crisis,” Bapna said.
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