In August 2025, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its intention to rescind an extremely important 2009 ruling that identifies greenhouse gas pollution as a threat to public health and the environment. This decision, led by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin and made at the agency’s Washington headquarters, has .

The 2009 “endangerment finding” was a landmark moment that powered the EPA to regulate emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from cars, trucks, factories, and power plants. They previously wanted to keep temperature rises below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but under the new Trump administration, this idea is slowly being erased.

However, the Trump-appointed EPA leadership argues that the agency lacks authority to enforce these rules and claims that relaxing regulations would instead benefit businesses, especially those reliant on fossil fuels. To give his argument more credibility and evidence, Trump hand-picked 5 climate scientists known to be skeptical of mainstream climate science to write a recent report from the Department of Energy (DOE), which was also produced in under two months. However, many climate experts say that the conclusions of this report contradict the decades-long scientific consensus, arguing that it still lacks sufficient credibility. Critics warn that undoing the 2009 ruling would severely weaken the U.S.’s ability to regulate emissions, undermining domestic and international climate efforts. The United States remains the world’s second-largest polluter, and changes in its environmental policies reverberate globally. The EPA’s proposal is currently open for public comment and is expected to face legal challenges before any final decision is reached.

As climate-related disasters like droughts, heatwaves, and extreme storms intensify worldwide, the decision of the EPA will surely be a pivotal point for the measures taken on climate change in the future months.