“Can they do that?” has been the question on the lips of the drop-jawed public as President Trump’s people bulldoze through the federal bureaucracy. Now, it’s the question being asked at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), where the administration’s fossil fuel ideologues are launching an audacious assault on the cornerstone of the agency’s regulatory edifice.

My response to this regulatory onslaught? Go ahead. Make my day.

Media reports confirm that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has recommended rescinding the 2009 ruling known as the “endangerment finding.” Because this finding serves as the basis for many regulations limiting emissions from fossil fuels, it has rankled staunch defenders of the oil and gas industry for years. Now, they have an administration willing to root it out.

This effort will fail, and the defeat will carry a political cost.

The endangerment finding, which dates back to the first Obama EPA, states that heat-trapping greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, threaten public health and welfare and must be regulated.

The endangerment finding, which dates back to the first Obama EPA, states that heat-trapping greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, threaten public health and welfare and must be regulated. If the finding were wiped off the record, the EPA would lose its authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The finding provides the foundation for rules that cap emissions from factories, power plants, vehicles and agriculture, and its rescission would ripple through the regulatory framework.

Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at Conservation Law Foundation, told me by email, “Eliminating the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases would wreck its ability to regulate major polluters and fight climate change.”

The centrality of the endangerment finding sweetens the pot for those striving to expunge it. Conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, have publicly argued that the finding must be eliminated and have proposed rationales for doing so. Project 2025, which is proving to be Trump’s blueprint for dismantling the bureaucracy despite him disclaiming it, suggests an “update” to the finding, presumably one that would gut it.

However, the agency must comply with the law governing the rescission of regulations. The EPA must initiate a new rule-making procedure, a complex process in itself. Daly from CLF noted, “Undoing well-supported, scientifically sound decision-making by agencies is far more difficult than it may seem. Rolling back the endangerment finding requires proving that the previous application of the rule was wrong — an argument that directly conflicts with overwhelming scientific evidence.” Zeldin must develop a new scientific assessment of the threats to public health and welfare posed by greenhouse gas emissions and reach the absurd conclusion that none exist.

Despite the odds against him, Zeldin’s staff (those who remain after Elon Musk’s mass firings) will drag out the tired arguments that climate change skeptics have been using for years: the climate has always changed (not this fast), water vapor is the key factor (no, it’s not), climate modeling is inaccurate (not true), more carbon dioxide is better for plants (debunked), and there has been no change in severe weather (wrong again).

After proposing a formal withdrawal of the finding, the EPA will have to open a public comment period, typically lasting 60 to 90 days. An avalanche of comments will bury the agency. Since the EPA’s original research on the endangerment finding in 2009, research has further established that emissions of greenhouse gases stemming from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels are heating the planet, acidifying the ocean and intensifying storms. Exhaustive studies from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and National Climate Assessments — including the one issued during the first Trump administration —  all point conclusively to the direct link between fossil fuels and climate change.

A judicial review will ensue, which could create an opening for Zeldin. Federal courts have twice upheld the endangerment finding, in 2012 and again in 2023, but that doesn’t guarantee the current Supreme Court will concur. If a sympathetic bench with scant scientific background is presented with contrary analyses, a majority could conceivably side with the EPA.

Admittedly, none of the conservative members of the Supreme Court have been climate-friendly. Brett Kavanaugh, for example, has been skeptical of the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions. Amy Coney Barrett was evasive on the subject at her confirmation hearing. And in the 2007 Supreme Court case establishing the EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse gases — which led directly to the EPA’s endangerment finding — the dissenting opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

But I don’t believe the Court will overturn it. The endangerment finding is a long-standing precedent backed by a monumental accumulation of rigorous scientific evidence from around the globe. The case that Zeldin’s EPA can marshal against it in 2025 is a rickety facade beside the buttressed cathedral of climate science.

Moreover, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act legislated amendments to the Clean Air Act that define greenhouse gases as pollutants, giving the endangerment finding a solid legal footing. Were Congress to repeal those provisions, Zeldin’s case would be much stronger — and this Court has already made use of the major questions doctrine, which prioritizes legislation over agency authority.

Nevertheless, a ruling in favor of Administrator Zeldin’s case would be a seismic indictment of the Court’s credibility, regardless of its rationale.

Daly points out that Americans favor the government taking action on climate change and even in the business community, overturning the finding is not universally popular. “Industry groups have acknowledged the need to slow climate change,” she commented. “Most oppose fully eliminating the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gases – if only because it would sow chaos and unpredictability for corporations.”

So, go ahead, Administrator Zeldin. Commit your agency’s limited resources to this quixotic exercise that spits in the face of the nation’s climate scientists and most Americans. Your effort may placate MAGA extremists and repay the fossil-fuel billionaires for their support, but ultimately, you will not succeed.

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