How the Trump administration is attacking limits on planet-warming pollution, putting us in danger

Pollution from burning fossil fuels is heating up our planet, making extreme weather worse, costing us all and hurting our kids.

That’s why EDF is fighting back against the Trump administration’s dangerous attacks on something that protects us all. It’s called the Endangerment Finding.

What is the Endangerment Finding, and why does it matter?

The Endangerment Finding is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s longstanding determination that greenhouse gases — which are released when we burn fossil fuels — endanger public health and welfare.

That finding means the EPA has the obligation under the Clean Air Act to limit how much greenhouse gas pollution is dumped into the air, just as the agency does for other harmful pollutants.

The Endangerment Finding is based on mountains of scientific evidence and has been affirmed repeatedly by courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since adopting the Endangerment Finding, the EPA has taken commonsense steps to reduce planet-warming pollution from power plants, cars and trucks, and oil and gas operations, delivering immediate benefits to people across the country.

But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the EPA to make recommendations on the “legality and continued applicability” of the Endangerment Finding.

And in March 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the agency would formally reconsider the Endangerment Finding.

What’s at stake for everyone if we lose the Endangerment Finding?

What’s at stake is our health and safety, the quality of our everyday lives.

Revoking or undermining the Endangerment Finding would endanger us all by allowing more harmful climate pollution that’s driving deadly and costly extreme weather. Children and future generations will bear the burden of these impacts, too.

A warming planet fuels dangerous hurricanes, floods and wildfires, and worsens air quality. As the Earth’s temperatures rise, heat waves become more frequent and intense, and droughts get worse. In 2024 alone, the U.S. experienced 27 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters.

Hotter days harm our physical and mental health, contributing to increased illnesses and medical emergencies. Extreme heat makes it less safe for children to play outside, stealing essential moments of childhood.

Climate change costs families and communities a fortune as health care and insurance costs rise, and lives, homes, jobs and crops are lost or damaged in floods, droughts and increasingly dangerous weather.

Reducing climate pollution, as the Endangerment Finding requires, leads to cleaner air, better health, more jobs and safer communities. Attacking this bedrock finding, as the Trump administration is poised to do, will mean more pollution, more harms and higher costs in communities across the country.

The science behind the Endangerment Finding

The Endangerment Finding is based on a vast amount of scientific evidence that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are contributing to climate change, and that this climate pollution harms our health.

Over time, the scientific evidence connecting greenhouse gas pollution with danger to human health has only become stronger.

The science unmistakably supports what so many people are already experiencing: This pollution is harming us.

View scientific evidence supporting the Endangerment Finding (PDF)

What the courts have said about the Endangerment Finding

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court held that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA must use science to determine whether greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health and welfare. Following the Supreme Court decision, the EPA issued the Endangerment Finding in 2009.

Courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the Endangerment Finding, including in the following cases:

• 2012: The Endangerment Finding was upheld by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. After fossil fuel industry groups challenged the EPA’s use of scientific assessments, the court held that the EPA’s findings were supported by substantial evidence and that the agency had considered the scientific evidence in “a rational manner.”
• 2013: The Supreme Court denied petitions for review that raised challenges to the Endangerment Finding.
• 2023: The D.C. Circuit again rejected challenges to the Endangerment Finding, and the Supreme Court again denied review.

View legal resources relating to the Endangerment Finding

How the Endangerment Finding protects people

The Endangerment Finding provides support for EPA protections that safeguard people from some of the largest sources of climate pollution, including:

• Power plants: Coal- and gas-fired power plants are responsible for about 25% of climate pollution in the U.S. In 2024, the EPA finalized a suite of rules to address greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution from fossil fuel power plants.
• Transportation: The transportation sector accounts for the largest portion (28%) of total climate pollution in the U.S. In 2024, the EPA finalized new Clean Car Standards to reduce pollution from new passenger cars, light trucks and vans. The EPA also finalized protective greenhouse gas standards for heavy-duty trucks in 2024.
• Oil and gas operations: Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. About 30% of today’s global warming is driven by methane emissions from human actions, including methane leaks from oil and gas companies. In 2023, the EPA finalized a rule that will sharply reduce methane emissions and other dangerous pollutants from the oil and gas industry.

It is vital that these commonsense measures remain in place. A recent EDF analysis highlights how key actions (including the EPA climate protections mentioned above) will together reduce more than 28 billion metric tons of climate pollution by 2055.

By law, it is the EPA’s responsibility to protect us from climate pollution. Revoking the Endangerment Finding would threaten the well-being of people in communities across the country.