Buenos Aires, February 10 (NA) — The President of the United States, Donald Trump, plans to repeal a decree from the era of the Democratic government of Barack Obama that served as the basis for the fight against greenhouse gas emissions, Washington announced this Tuesday. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed last year to repeal the so-called 2009 Endangerment Finding, which was considered a major blow to climate action by the largest emitter of pollutants in history. “Trump will ‘formally repeal’ the text on Thursday,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt specified in a press briefing, as reported by the site DW and accessed by the Argentine News Agency. “This will be the biggest deregulatory action in the history of the United States and will save the American people $1.3 trillion in suffocating regulations,” Leavitt added. The text, which stipulates that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to health, has been used as the basis for several federal regulations that limit emissions. Greenhouse gases are pollutants under Obama-era regulations. The decree concluded that six greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) endanger public health and well-being by driving climate change. This conclusion stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts vs. EPA, which affirmed that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and instructed the agency to determine if they pose a danger to public health and well-being. While the Endangerment Finding was initially applied only to a section of the Clean Air Act that regulates vehicle emissions, it was later incorporated into other regulations. The repeal of the decree would imply the immediate elimination of federal greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles.
