In July, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to delete its scientific finding recognizing that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health, with the goal of making cars less efficient and more costly to fuel. That plan went up for public comment last month, and the public comment period closes in two days, on September 22.
At issue is the EPA’s “Endangerment Finding,” which is the scientific basis of EPA’s regulation of harmful greenhouse gases. The endangerment finding found that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health, recognizing a scientific fact that every serious person has known for a long time – but now it was at least codified into federal procedure.
The Endangerment Finding focused specifically on carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), sulfur hexaflouride (SF6), hydroflourocarbons (HFCs), nitrous oxide (N2O), and perfluourocarbons (PFCs, now more commonly known as PFAS or “forever chemicals”), all of which we are certain cause climate change and harm humans.
And, in fact, the EPA is required to regulate these pollutants by the Clean Air Act, which tells the EPA that it must work to reduce air pollution.
Lee Zeldin wants to poison you and raise your fuel costs
Despite that legal requirement, in July, Lee Zeldin, a fraudster placed into the position of chief saboteur of the EPA by a convicted felon who sought a billion-dollar bribe from the oil industry while running for an office he is Constitutionally barred from holding, announced that he would repeal this finding, flying in the face of law, science, public health and American economic interests.
Zeldin’s stated purpose for attempting to delete this finding is because if the finding is gone, it will allow him to roll back other life- and money-saving vehicle efficiency regulations. He wants to revert those regulations because they constrain the fossil fuel industry – which has given him hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes over his political career.
The specific regulations that Zeldin has his eyes on are automotive regulations put in place by the EPA under President Biden. According to the government’s own numbers, these regulations stand to save 2,000 lives per year and save Americans over $100 billion dollars per year in fuel and health costs.
In announcing his illegal plan to kill Americans and cost all of us more money, Zeldin was joined by Chris Wright, a former oil CEO who is currently the titular head of the Department of Energy. In April, Wright signed off on a DoE report which said the rollbacks sought by Zeldin would raise gas prices by 76 cents per gallon, showing that the people behind this plan know it will increase your costs and yet are shoving it down your throat anyway.
The reason gas prices would rise is because of higher demand. If vehicles are less efficient, not only will they burn more gasoline thus costing you more money and also causing more pollution, more dependency on foreign oil and higher health costs for everyone, but that gasoline will be more expensive because that’s what happens to prices of products when demand rises. And the proceeds from those higher gas prices aren’t going to anything societally beneficial, they’re rather going to line the pockets of oil elites.
Wright’s office also offered a junk report (which is wrong in 100 ways) to justify the EPA’s position, claiming wrongly that climate change isn’t all that bad. But in doing so, the DoE misinterprets data, which the author of one of the cited studies immediately pointed out that the DoE misinterpreted. So, even the stretched justifications offered for the plan are steeped in the ignorance we have come accustomed to since late January.
Public comments are open, and widely oppose EPA’s dangerous plan
So far, this clearly harmful plan has only been proposed, and has been open for public comment on regulations.gov since early September, where interested members of the public can leave substantive comments on whether they support the planned regulatory change or not.
Since then, comments have been rolling in, though the docket only shows a total of 676 approved comments as of this writing. This seems exceptionally low, given that the original endangerment finding produced some 380,000 comments.
As it turns out, the EPA has actually received over 111,000 comments so far, but it has been approving those comments for public posting at a glacial pace. At the current rate, it will take some 30 years for the agency to sift through and approve all the comments.
We reached out to the EPA to ask what was taking so long, and it said that it was busy categorizing comments based on whether they were part of a mass comment campaign or written by individual commenters, and sorting through them for the presence of profanity (although, one wonders if profanity is really all that unjustified when it’s on a plan that will knowingly kill thousands of people per year). Many comments have been “deferred” after an initial scan, awaiting another look.
Regardless, the number of approved comments is still incredibly small compared to the total, and it’s hard not to wonder if something nefarious is happening here.
Looking through the few comments EPA has accepted, the vast majority seem to be in favor of the reasonable and both scientifically and legally correct position of maintaining the Endangerment Finding. If these are the comments that EPA deigned to allow through, even in the midst of its efforts to kill Americans, then we can imagine even more vehement opposition to its plan in the 110,920+ comments it has hidden (including this author’s… which was made as soon as the docket went up for comment, and much like this article, is forceful and truthful but not profane).
In addition to the public comment site, EPA also held a virtual public hearing, where interested members of the public could call in to make their voices heard. The vast majority of callers supported the scientifically correct position of maintaining the finding.
The comment period is also much shorter than usually expected for regulations like this, as pointed out by a comment made by the Attorneys General of several states. The comment period is likely smaller than legally required of the EPA, just another example of the EPA breaking the law to try to kill you. After this comment, EPA did extend the comment period… by one week, from September 15 to September 22. Which is still not as long as the legal requirement.
Comments open through Monday, then what happens?
Public comments can be submitted here. In case you get lost, the docket code is EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194.
If Zeldin pushes forward with his idea despite the inevitable public opposition to a plan to raise Americans’ costs and make their lives more deadly, the move will likely be caught up in courts for years, wasting Americans’ time and money and jeopardizing American competitiveness as the world rapidly moves towards improving vehicle efficiency without us.
And in court, it sure might lose, given that in the last iteration of the Trump dictatorship, the Natural Resources Defense Council won 90% of its 163 cases against his attempts to poison the planet, because his group of incompetents seem unable to read the Administrative Procedures Act which governs how all federal regulations are set. One important aspect of that is that agencies are required to respond to public comments, which is why it is important to leave them.
Even if this clearly unwise and probably illegal move loses in court eventually, we still will have lost time in the transition. The time wasted in court will still give Zeldin’s oil masters some extra runway to sell their poison to us, and ensuring America’s competitors get a leg up in the transition to cleaner technologies while Americans remain forever poorer and sicker as a result of the republican party’s actions.
Author: Jameson Dow
Source: Electrek
Reviewed By: Editorial Team
