The stakes of repealing landmark environmental finding

Two weeks ago the Trump administration announced a plan to repeal what's known as the endangerment finding. It’s a landmark 2009 finding that allows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they endanger public health and welfare. 

As part of MPR News’ Getting to Green series, reporter Dan Kraker talked to Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington D.C., about what a possible repeal of the endangerment finding would mean nationally and in Minnesota.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity. 

Could you spell out a few of the most critical policies, in your view, that rely on the endangerment finding? 

The first thing EPA tackled was to regulate carbon-polluting tailpipe emissions from light-duty cars and passenger vehicles, and also from medium and heavy-duty trucks. That started happening right away in 2009 and was finalized in 2010. We've had several iterations of car tailpipe rules since then. 

The second category that EPA focused on was power plants. Here, the story is a little bit more mixed, because there's been several efforts by the EPA to implement clean power standards for the power sector on carbon emissions. Those have been fought in the courts. They went up to the Supreme Court. So we’ve seen kind of a back and forth, and essentially, the power plant standards have never really taken effect. 

Then there’s the subsequent pieces, going sector by sector. The most important one there is the methane standard. Methane is a short-term greenhouse gas. It’s a “super pollutant.” And that comes from leaking oil and gas facilities and wells and pipelines. So the EPA has put standards on wells and on natural gas systems to limit that.

If the endangerment finding is repealed, do those policies go away? 

Essentially, the answer is “yes.” You take away this foundation and the regulations that are built on top of it would also fall away.

Headlines from the past couple weeks have suggested this move could spell the end of climate progress. Is that hyperbole, or would this potentially have far-reaching impacts?

I think it absolutely has far-reaching impact. This is about battling climate pollution. The tailpipe standards that are in place now are projected to reduce carbon emissions by 8 billion tons over the coming decades.

That’s more than the U.S. emits in an entire year. And that’s the kind of thing that is at stake if you pull the rug out from under these standards. 

But it’s also about what the future looks like for a prosperous American economy. If you step back and look over the past 15 years since the endangerment finding, we’ve seen a real push towards clean energy in this country. In places like Minnesota, you’re seeing massive expansion in solar capacity, wind capacity, renewables. And that's the broader thing that's at risk here.

Can the Trump administration just undo this finding? 

No, this is just a proposal. There’s a long process. It goes to comments. Those comments have to be considered and reviewed. There will be a bunch of lawsuits right away challenging this. Those will go to the D.C. Court of Appeals. And almost certainly, whatever they decide, will go up to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

And so if you do the math, we're really talking, probably June of 2027, at the earliest, before it goes to the Supreme Court, and it could be much longer than that before the Supreme Court makes a final determination. 

Minnesota has moved fairly aggressively to confront climate change. Most notably, a law was passed a couple years ago requiring utilities to produce all of their electricity from clean sources by 2040. Are laws like that going to be impacted by this endangerment finding?  

No. Minnesota retains its ability to follow their state policies and state clean energy policies, regardless of the EPA regulation. 

On the other hand, if we pull back generally from investing in the clean energy economy at the federal level, I think that is going to trickle down. We’re going to see a slowdown in the clean energy economy, and that's going to come with economic costs to states like Minnesota that have been in the lead.

Do you anticipate that states like Minnesota will play an even more important role moving forward? 

I think states like Minnesota have been critical all throughout the past several decades. That’s been a constant. If you think about the history of what we’ve gone through on climate action at the federal level, it’s been two steps forward, one step back, maybe three steps back. And meanwhile, states like Minnesota have been in the lead. I think that will continue, and we’ll need to lean into that. 

The downside of that is there are some states who won’t follow that lead, and so the leadership that Minnesota and other states can provide is going to be critical. It’s going to be critical to Minnesota’s economy, as well as to climate action more broadly. But we’re going to need to see leadership by the U.S., I think, if we’re going to really tackle this problem globally.