EPA administrator defends administration's move to revoke 2009 finding pollution endangers human health

Source: CNN Politics

PUBLISHED Aug 3, 2025, 12:38 PM ET


Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s move to repeal the so-called endangerment finding that planet-warming pollution from fossil fuels endangers human health. “To reach the 2009 endangerment finding, they relied on the most pessimistic views of the science. The great news is that a lot of the pessimistic views of the science in 2009 that was being assumed ended up not panning out,” Zeldin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We can rely on 2025 facts as opposed to 2009 bad assumptions.”

The 2009 scientific finding that human-caused climate change endangers human health and safety, which has served as EPA’s basis for many of its significant regulations aiming to protect the environment and decrease climate pollution. If successful, the repeal could strip away the federal government’s most powerful way to control the country’s planet-warming pollution and fight climate change.

The text of the administration’s proposal to repeal the 2009 endangerment finding said that while greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise in the atmosphere, that rise has been “driven primarily by increased emissions from foreign sources,” and has happened “without producing the degree of adverse impacts to public health and welfare in the United States that the EPA anticipated in the 2009 Endangerment Finding.”

The US is the world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and historically has emitted more planet-warming pollution than any other country. Many rigorous scientific findings since 2009 have showed both climate pollution and its warming effects are not just harming public health but killing people outright. In the nearly 16 years since the EPA first issued the Supreme Court-ordered endangerment finding, the world has warmed an additional 0.45 degrees Celsius (or 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit) to 1.4 degrees Celsius, according to climate scientist Zeke Hausfather.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/03/politics/epa-administrator-pollution-human-health