https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/02/10/epa-is-right-reverse-obama-overreach/
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday is expected to announce what he describes as the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. It’s about time.
Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 to regulate local pollution around the country, and regulators did that for decades. Then, in 2009, the EPA decided it would treat greenhouse gases like other pollutants, despite their damage being global rather than local.
That declaration, called the “endangerment finding,” has been used by bureaucrats since then to dramatically expand the federal government’s power over cars. Now, the EPA will rescind it.
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For now, free-market-driven innovation has done more to combat climate change than regulatory power grabs like the “endangerment finding” ever did.
The U.S. share of global greenhouse gas emissions has been trending downward since the end of World War II, and the 2009 policy change didn’t meaningfully alter its trajectory. The recent decline has been driven by the embrace of natural gas and renewables, which lower electricity prices when adopted for economic reasons rather than because of government mandates. Despite the obsession with gas-powered vehicles, light and medium-duty cars and trucks combined to generate just 1.8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2022.
EPA’s Endangerment Finding had little effect on U.S. contribution to climate change
These emissions continue to rise because the atmosphere does not care which country the gases come from. The EPA has no power over China and India, which are increasing their emissions even as they talk a big game at climate conferences.
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In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that bureaucrats couldn’t make new rules of “vast economic and political significance” without Congress directly giving away its power. More than 20 years ago, the EPA admitted that the Clean Air Act did not directly give them this power, and the estimated $1 trillion regulatory cost is undeniably significant.
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