Fact Focus: False claims by Trump administration as it revokes endangerment finding

Summary

When President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the revocation of a 2009 finding used to support U.S. greenhouse-gas regulation, the Associated Press said their remarks included multiple false claims about law, climate science, energy costs and vehicle rules. The finding they revoked, known as the endangerment finding, has been a central basis for federal action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change.

The AP’s review highlighted how the Trump administration’s statements fit into broader disputes over the endangerment finding’s legal and scientific foundation, as well as the energy and health implications of climate policy. The report also pointed to what it described as mischaracterizations of what past federal actions required, especially around wind power costs and electric-vehicle policies.

The AP said Trump claimed that the endangerment finding “had no basis in fact,” “had none whatsoever,” and “had no basis in law.” The report said that claim was false, describing the finding as adopted in 2009 by the EPA after the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases are air pollutants that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The AP added that Ann Carlson, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA directed the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, and that the endangerment finding was the result of that directive.

The AP also said multiple federal courts have upheld the endangerment finding since it was adopted roughly 16 years earlier, and noted that the scientific evidence supporting the finding was provided by the EPA at the time it was issued and remained available on the agency’s website. The report used those details to argue that Trump’s legal characterization did not match the record.

In another exchange, the AP said Trump asserted that “We’ve basically stopped all windmills in this country” and that wind power is “the most expensive energy you can get.” The AP reported that onshore wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity generation and cited Energy Information Administration estimates describing new wind farms as producing around $30 per megawatt hour, based on July estimates referenced by the report. The AP contrasted that with estimates for new natural gas plants at around $65 per megawatt hour and advanced nuclear running over $80, while saying offshore wind is among the more expensive sources at $88 per megawatt hour.

The AP further reported that Trump, asked about the cost to health and the environment, said: “It has nothing to do with public health. This is all a scam, a giant scam.” The AP said that characterization contradicts peer-reviewed scientific research linking climate change to health harms, including deaths from heat waves and health impacts associated with extreme weather such as hurricanes and floods and air pollution from worsening wildfires. The AP cited a 2021 Nature Climate Change study estimating that globally about 9,700 people die each year from heat-related deaths attributable to human-caused climate change, based on data from 732 cities, including more than 200 in the United States.

The AP said it also pointed to another study released the previous year that listed climate-change health harms and concluded that health costs are at least $10 billion a year, using the EPA’s own calculation method. In addition, the AP said the reported history of the science extends back about 170 years, citing early work by Eunice Foote showing that carbon dioxide heated cylinders with thermometers inside warmed more than ambient air. The AP also referenced the first national climate assessment from 2000, before Obama and Biden, saying it “concluded that climate variability and change are likely to increase morbidity and mortality risks.”

The AP also addressed remarks attributed to Zeldin, who the report said argued that the Obama and Biden administrations used the endangerment finding to “steamroll into existence a left-wing wish,” including electric vehicle mandates. The AP said Trump has made this claim before and that there was no federal mandate forcing the purchase of electric vehicles. The report cited Carrie Jenks, executive director of Harvard Law School’s environmental and energy law program, saying that companies had variety in how to comply with the standards and that “The endangerment finding nor the regulations mandated a shift from one type of vehicle to another.”

The AP said it did note that former President Joe Biden set up a non-binding goal that electric vehicles make up half of new cars sold by 2030, and that Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office revoking that goal. It also said Biden-era policies tightened restrictions on pollution from gas-powered cars and trucks to encourage the shift toward electric vehicles.

The AP said Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein and Matthew Daly contributed from Washington, and directed readers to its Fact Check pages for more verification of the claims it described.

Note: This article is based on a single Associated Press fact-check report included in the cluster sources.