WWF on the EPA's plans to overturn the endangerment finding

This week, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced his plans to overturn the “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases, which would strip the agency of its power to regulate climate change pollution. In light of that development, WWF's  Marcene Mitchell and Will Gartshore share their thoughts:

Why we all need the EPA to keep protecting us from climate pollution

By Marcene Mitchell

You might have seen the news this week about efforts to strip the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of its power to regulate climate pollution. If you're wondering what that actually means for you and your family, it's pretty straightforward: it would take away one of our main tools for protecting Americans from the climate disasters we're already living through. Nature and a stable climate are vital to securing a livable future—and protecting them is not optional; it's essential.

Here's what's happening. Some leaders want to revoke what's called the "endangerment finding"—basically the scientific determination that gives the EPA the authority to regulate heat-trapping pollutants like carbon dioxide. They're not arguing the science is wrong (because frankly, it's rock solid). Instead, they're claiming the EPA was never supposed to have this power under the Clean Air Act.

If they succeed, the EPA couldn't take action on climate pollution anymore. All the existing protections would be wiped out, too. What makes this so concerning is that this is affecting real people, right now. We're not talking about some far-off problem anymore. Climate change is happening in communities across the country—regardless of political affiliation. Life on Earth needs nature and a stable climate. We are losing both. And it's going to get worse if we stop implementing the solutions that can make it better.

Maybe you've watched the news coverage of the massive wildfires that destroyed lives in California, wiping out entire towns. Or the floods in Texas that broke records and devastated communities. That's not to mention the hurricanes that become bigger every year, affecting places like North Carolina which never experienced the extreme impacts of these storms before. These aren't random occurrences anymore—they're becoming the new normal, threatening both the communities we love and the natural systems that sustain us.

Taking away the EPA's ability to address climate pollution would leave us defenseless against these threats that are only getting worse. Nature is our most valuable resource for sustaining life, but it is under threat as the problems our planet is facing are increasingly more complex and urgent. We must address the intertwined and accelerating challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss.

With all of this mounting damage, you'd think protecting the places we love—our forests, wetlands, communities, and keeping the air we breathe clean—would be something every American could get behind. In fact, a 2020 study from Pew Research Center found that about two-thirds (65%) of Americans felt the federal government was doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change. And that’s how it’s worked before.

Back when Congress wrote—and later when it amended—the Clean Air Act, lawmakers from both parties stood behind protecting public health from pollution of all kinds. They were smart about how they set it up, too. Instead of trying to list every possible pollutant that might threaten us, they used broad language to let EPA scientists figure out what needed regulating based on the evidence. The resulting rule was simple: if a pollutant "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger" human health or welfare, the EPA should take action.

This approach made sense because Congress knew new threats would emerge over time. They wanted the EPA to be able to respond quickly, before problems became full-blown health crises. The Supreme Court even looked at this question and agreed that greenhouse gases clearly fit within the Clean Air Act's definition of "air pollutant." When the EPA issued its endangerment finding in 2009, it was the result of years of careful, scientific analysis.

When this happened in 2009, that year was the second-hottest on record. Today? It doesn't even crack the top 10. This past year was by far the hottest we've ever recorded, and it brought climate disasters that cost Americans more than $182 billion and killed 568 people. Since 1980, weather and climate disasters have cost our country nearly $3 trillion.

Let that sink in for a moment. These aren't just numbers on a spreadsheet—they represent real families who lost everything, communities that are still rebuilding, lives that were cut short. Meanwhile, climate scientists keep telling us the same thing: human activities are "unequivocally" driving these changes, and the impacts are happening faster than we expected.

We must do all we can to protect the places where we live, work, and raise our families. Nature is not just a casualty of climate change—it is also a critical part of the solution. From nature-based solutions that protect the places we love, to supporting local communities that are stewards of biodiversity, to encouraging corporate sustainability efforts, this is not about one solution or one sector. It's about collective ambition and action.

It really comes down to a simple question: do we want to trust the science and protect American families, or do we want to ignore the evidence and hope for the best? The endangerment finding is our recognition that climate pollution is a real threat that needs real solutions. Clean air, stable climate, and thriving nature aren't luxuries; they're basic rights every American family deserves.

Eliminating the EPA's climate authority right now would be like throwing away our umbrella in the middle of a storm. We have the knowledge. We have the tools. We have momentum. What we need now is the will to act—at the speed and scale this moment demands. Because we need nature. And nature needs us. Now.

Future generations are counting on us to make the right choice here. Let's not let them down.

Marcene Mitchell is WWF's Senior Vice President for Climate

The lion's roar: Remembering Russ Train and his defense of the endangerment finding

By Will Gartshore

The news out of the EPA this week has me flashing back to 2010—the last time there was a serious attempt to overturn the agency’s endangerment finding on greenhouse gases. My nostalgia for that moment 15 years ago is less about that first struggle over this critical federal climate policy than it is about the unexpected opportunity it gave me to get to know and collaborate with one of the great lions of the environmental movement— Russell Train, or “Russ” to those who knew him.

Russ Train was the first president of WWF US, from 1978 to 1985. Twenty-five years later, he still kept a corner office in our Washington, DC, headquarters as our Chairman Emeritus. If you walked past on any given day, you could often see him in there working away, even as he approached his 90th birthday. I was 35 at the time, working on our government affairs team (as I am today), and as the 2010 endangerment finding debate heated up, I found myself invited to come join Mr. Train in his office. He had an idea, and he was looking for someone to help him pull it off.

Prior to running WWF, Russ had spent a decade as part of the Nixon and Ford Administrations, standing up the legal and institutional frameworks of modern American environmentalism. He was the first Chairman of the Council of Environmental Quality, the second Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and played a central role in helping to shape our landmark environmental laws still standing today, including the Clean Air Act. He was a Republican and a self-described conservative. And on that day in 2010, he was visibly worked up over efforts in Congress to overturn the endangerment finding – the EPA’s landmark, science-based determination that GHGs endanger public health and welfare and should therefore be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

The crux of the arguments then was the same as we are hearing today: not that the science is wrong—in fact, it’s overwhelming and irrefutable—but that EPA has somehow misinterpreted its authority under the Clean Air Act and doesn’t actually have the power to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under existing law. Were that position to prevail, EPA would no longer be able to take action to address climate change pollution, now or in the future, and any previous such policies would be declared null and void. As far as Russ was concerned, it was an argument without grounds or merit.

The day I first met with Russ, he had been at a dinner the night before where Lisa Jackson was also in attendance. She was the current EPA Administrator at the time, and Russ had left that dinner determined to weigh in and validate the steps her agency was taking on GHGs. So, he spent the next day penning the draft of a letter, scribbled in bold Sharpie marker on several pages of unlined paper, which he passed to me to read from across his desk.

His argument was unequivocal: of course, the EPA had the authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. As the person who steered the agency in its early days and helped enact both the 1970 law and its 1977 amendments (both of which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan margins), he was something of an authority on the subject. He strongly rejected the premise that, because it makes no mention of greenhouse gases, the Clean Air Act was not intended to regulate them. From his standpoint, this argument was “inconsistent with the history of the law as it has been applied for the past 40 years and misconstrues the original intentions of Congress.” As he articulated in his 2010 letter, which was sent to congressional leaders at the time:

Precisely because existing knowledge was so limited at the time, Congress broadly defined the term “air pollutant” and relied on the experts at EPA to evaluate individual pollutants. Congress also clearly established that the sole criterion triggering EPA action was to be a scientific one: whether a pollutant “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger” human health or welfare.

To drive the point home, he used the example of another emerging issue EPA addressed using the law:

In my own tenure as EPA Administrator, our most pressing challenge was reducing airborne lead pollution from the burning of leaded gasoline in motor vehicles. Like greenhouse gas pollutants, airborne lead was nowhere specifically addressed in the Clean Air Act. However, the scientific evidence strongly suggested that it was resulting in severe health effects, particularly in children. Under the law, the EPA was compelled to issue an “endangerment finding”, which established a risk to human health or welfare and obligated the agency to begin regulating lead in automobiles.

In 1973, I adopted health-based standards to reduce airborne lead levels by more than half in five years. I did this in spite of some lingering scientific uncertainty and over the strong objections of industry. In 1975, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld my decision, arguing that the law “would seem to demand that regulatory action precede, and, optimally, prevent, the perceived threat.”

In 1977, Congress itself explicitly endorsed this reasoning when it amended the Clean Air Act, emphasizing “the Administrator’s duty to assess risks rather than wait for proof of actual harm” and broadening the criteria for action under the law from “will endanger [human health or welfare]” to “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger”. The intention of Congress was clear: to empower the EPA to respond to threats that had not yet arisen or had yet to be perceived. This is precisely what the EPA is doing today in acting to regulate greenhouse gas pollutants.

By all indications, those once again attempting to overturn the endangerment finding are attempting to rerun this legal argument because they know the science is not on their side. George W. Bush’s EPA tacitly acknowledged as much in the early 2000s, when it dragged its feet on making such a finding until the Supreme Court effectively mandated the agency do so in Massachusetts v. EPA. In that closely watched decision, the Court affirmed the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases and declared that these emissions “fit well within” the Clean Air Act’s definition of an “air pollutant” under the law. When the EPA subsequently issued its endangerment finding in 2009, under President Obama, much of the science used to make the decision came from the previous Republican Administration.

Some of those now seeking to overturn that 2009 finding argue that there is new science to consider. But the facts we have gathered over the intervening 16 years demonstrate that, if anything, the science—and SCOTUS—had significantly underestimated the dangerous impacts these air pollutants pose to public health and welfare. At the time, 2009 was the planet’s second hottest year on record, beaten only by 2005. Today, neither year is even in the Top 10.

The hottest year by far at this point has been 2024, which also saw climate- and weather-related disasters in the U.S. costing more than $182 billion and causing 568 deaths. The cost of such disasters to Americans has also been on a sharply increasing trajectory, totaling $2.9 trillion going back to 1980. In 2017 alone, they cost nearly $400 billion and resulted in 3,280 deaths. All of the above statistics come from the US government’s own data¹ and reflect only a fraction of the overall costs and impacts facing America’s economy and its communities. Based on the latest science, the EPA should be doubling down on its endangerment finding, not seeking to overturn it.

As was the case in 2010, one can’t help but conclude that the current effort to do just that is based neither on the science nor the law but rather on an entirely different set of considerations. Russ articulated those in 2010 with words that resonate equally well now:

Such proposals are driven not by science but by political considerations – to stall action on an emerging threat and shield elected officials from having to make difficult but necessary decisions. But as Congress itself has made clear, the Clean Air Act was not written to protect politicians; it was written to protect the American people.

In his role as EPA Administrator, Russ understood well his responsibility to do just that. Throughout his life, Russ was a role model of pragmatism and bipartisan cooperation, marked by irrepressible good humor and an intentionally collegial spirit. His legacy stands as a potent reminder of the time when both parties vigorously agreed that protecting our environment should be an urgent issue that bridges political divides. His shoes are big ones to fill. And one can’t help but wish that those following in his footsteps at the EPA would feel his same sense of responsibility to the agency’s mission—drawing inspiration from his example and working to uphold the bipartisan legacy he embodied, as well as the endangerment finding he argued so firmly in support of.

Will Gartshore is WWF's Senior Director for Policy and Government Affairs

[1] 2024 was the world’s warmest year on record | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters, 2024 (2024: An active year of U.S. billion-dollar weather and climate disasters | NOAA Climate.gov).