Rescinding the endangerment finding was overdue. But where do we turn for justice?
August 13, 2025
By: Gary Abernathy
The 2009 “endangerment finding,” in which the EPA formally declared that greenhouse gases were a public health threat, led to draconian laws and policies designed to cripple the fossil fuel industry and bring down the world’s most affordable and accessible energy sources. When EPA administrator Lee Zeldin announced in late July that the agency was rescinding the rule, the outcry from the climate cult was predictable.
The leading handwringer was none other than the spiritual godfather of the extremist climate movement, former Vice President Al Gore, who said, “Today’s EPA announcement ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis and sidelines the EPA’s own scientists and lawyers in favor of the interests and profits of the fossil fuel industry.”
Worshipers at the altar of climate calamity lined up to denounce the finding’s rollback both with practiced anger and a well-worn list of catastrophic predictions. But in fact, Zeldin’s announcement didn’t go far enough. While the rescission was a long overdue return to common sense and a repudiation of the exercise of raw politics in the guise of science, it did nothing to make restitution for years of societal and economic damage.
The history is well documented. While the attack on fossil fuels had started much earlier, the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling that Congress’s 1970 Clean Air Act intended to include carbon dioxide as an air pollutant, it further demanded that the EPA explain why greenhouse gases were not being regulated, especially in regard to auto emissions. In 2009, the Obama administration began producing reams of new regulations for automakers and other “polluters,” a term with an ever-widening and increasingly politicized definition. The Biden administration merrily piled on when its turn came.
https://empoweringamerica.org/rescinding-the-endangerment-finding-was-overdue-but-where-do-we-turn-for-justice/
