Why the EPA is right to challenge the ruinous "endangerment finding"

Originally Published: March 12, 2025

Great news!

The EPA just announced it’s challenging the single most destructive regulatory action in US history: the “endangerment finding.”

This bogus “finding” allowed Obama and Biden to ban gas cars, shut down power plants, slow US oil growth, and lock up our limitless natural gas.

• Ever wonder why the Biden EPA was able to become an economic dictator, prohibiting most Americans from buying a gas car after 2032 and effectively banning all coal plants and new natural gas plants after 2039?

  It started with the Obama EPA’s bogus “endangerment finding.”¹

• In 2009, the Obama EPA issued a “finding” that GHGs “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

  But GHGs mostly come from fossil fuels, which on net had clearly been enhancing health and welfare—and would continue doing so.²

• Since human beings began harnessing uniquely cost-effective energy from fossil fuels, human health and welfare have increased dramatically everywhere.

  Why? Because the benefits of cheap, reliable energy for billions far outweigh any negative side-effects of fossil fuels.³

Before and since the “endangerment finding,” which is supposedly about reducing climate danger, fossil fuels have on net made us far safer from climate danger by creating incredible climate resilience.

That’s why climate disaster deaths have declined 98% over 100 years!⁴

• In considering whether fossil fuels’ GHGs “endanger” us and thus should be restricted, EPA should have considered

  1. Overall benefits of fossil fuels
  2. Climate resilience benefits of fossil fuels
  3. Both positive and negative climate impacts of GHGs

  EPA failed on all 3 counts.

• The “endangerment finding” was particularly inane because it concluded that the US restricting US GHG emissions would accomplish anything globally—when in fact all it accomplished was harming us and offshoring industry to China, which now has 300+ new coal plants in the pipeline!⁵

• By falsely claiming that fossil fuels “endanger” human health, welfare, and climate safety when they were—and have continued to be—a net benefit, EPA has justified giving itself totalitarian powers that, if not stopped, will crater the US economy.

• Drawing on its bogus “endangerment” finding, the Biden EPA passed GHG rules that effectively ban all coal plants and new natural gas plants—by requiring them to capture at least 90% of GHGs, which no plant has ever done at all, let alone cost-effectively.
  How EPA's power plant rule will destroy our grid

• Drawing on its bogus “endangerment” finding, the Biden EPA passed “fuel economy standards” that would prevent more than 50% of Americans from buying a gasoline-powered vehicle after 2032—a complete violation of American freedom.⁶

• Drawing on the bogus “endangerment” finding, the Biden EPA and administration as a whole waged a “whole of government” war on fossil fuels that, if not reversed, will crater our entire economy—which has no near-term replacement for fossil fuels.⁷

• The Trump administration, especially EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, will be attacked relentlessly for challenging the bogus “endangerment finding”—but they should be praised for being willing to take on the most destructive regulatory action in American history.

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