Donald Trump will repeal on Thursday a text dating from the Obama years and serving as the basis for the fight against greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, his spokesperson Karoline Leavitt announced on Tuesday.
The American president will “formalize the repeal” of this text dating from 2009 and called the Endangerment Finding, she told the press.
“This will be the largest act of deregulation in American history,” she added, assuring that it would allow Americans to save money.
Strongly denounced by scientists and environmental defenders, such a turnaround will deal a major blow to climate action in the United States, the largest historical contributor to emissions warming the planet.
Adopted under the presidency of former Democratic President Barack Obama, the text stipulates that six greenhouse gases are dangerous for public health and therefore fall within the scope of pollutants regulated by the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Regulations at risk
Its adoption opened the way to numerous federal regulations aimed at limiting the release of these gases that warm the atmosphere (CO2, methane, etc.), starting with trucks and cars, which release carbon dioxide by burning gasoline.
Its revocation would therefore end the emissions limits imposed on vehicles and allow the Trump administration to cancel a series of other regulations, notably concerning power plants.
The administration of Donald Trump, which strongly supports oil and coal, has been seeking for several months to overturn this decision and the resulting regulations, to the great dismay of many scientists who denounce a decision contrary to science and the public interest.
“The scientific evidence relating to human-caused climate change and its consequences was unequivocal in 2009 and, since then, has become even more alarming and convincing,” recalled more than 1,000 scientists and experts in a public letter in July.
– Legal battle announced
The US government, for its part, downplays the role of human activities in climate change and maintains that greenhouse gases should not be treated as pollutants in the traditional sense because their effects on human health are indirect and global, rather than local.
He also believes that such a repeal would help lower the cost of new cars, after years of increases since the Covid-19 pandemic.
In any case, this revocation will certainly be challenged in court and could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
If the latter, predominantly conservative, has shown itself to be open in recent years to reversals of jurisprudence, the plaintiffs will note that it is one of its own decisions in 2007 which is at the origin of the EPA text.
“We will see them in court,” Manish Bapna, president of the environmental organization NRDC, recently promised.
This flashback comes as the year 2025 has been confirmed by climatologists as the third hottest ever recorded on Earth, and as the effects of climate change are being felt across the United States and the rest of the world.
Despite these tangible manifestations, the fight against greenhouse gases has stalled for two years across the developed world due to lack of sufficient investment in low-carbon technologies.
date: 2026-02-10 20:45:00
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