The administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, says he is moving to repeal a federal rule that he says has severely hampered the economy by forcing American businesses to prioritize green politics over profit in the name of preventing climate change. If finalized, the change to environmental regulation would “amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” Mr. Zeldin says. 

The regulation Mr. Zeldin is now seeking to rescind is known as the “endangerment finding.” It was signed in December 2009 during the Obama administration by the then-EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson. 

The regulation states that “six key well-mixed greenhouse gases” — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride — “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” when emitted into the atmosphere. 

The finding — suggesting that climate change is an imminent threat to the health of Americans and therefore falls under the remit of the EPA — has been used over the last 15 years to justify several executive branch efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, especially with respect to automobiles, including what Republicans often deride as President Biden’s “EV mandate,” coal power plants, and a number of other industries. 

Mr. Zeldin and the EPA claim that the total cost of the finding since 2009 has been more than $1 trillion in “hidden taxes.”

“In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year,” Mr. Zeldin said at a car dealership in Indiana on Tuesday. 

“We heard loud and clear the concern that EPA’s [greenhouse gas] emissions standards themselves — not carbon dioxide, which the finding never assessed independently — was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods,” Mr. Zeldin said. 

The EPA says that a rule to repeal the 2009 finding, if approved, would save tens of billions of dollars per year and drive down the cost of vehicles both small and large. 

“If finalized, this proposal would remove all greenhouse gas standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and heavy-duty engines,” an EPA fact sheet shared on Tuesday states. 

Critics say Mr. Zeldin’s potential rule for repealing the endangerment finding would have disastrous implications for fighting climate change. Vice President Gore — who in his post-White House years has been one of the world’s most vocal environmental activists — said on Tuesday that the EPA is going to allow for more pollution that will harm American families. 

“Today’s EPA announcement ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis and sidelines the EPA’s own scientists and lawyers in favor of the interests and profits of the fossil fuel industry,” Mr. Gore said in a post on X. 

“Weakening safeguards that reduce greenhouse gas pollution will harm American competitiveness in a global economy that is moving away from oil, gas, and coal and will increase the suffering of communities that are overburdened by the dirty co-pollutants caused by burning fossil fuels,” he added.