USA: greenhouse gases should no longer be considered harmful to health

Exit from the Paris Agreement and return to fossil fuels such as oil and coal: US President Donald Trump travels the climate protection where he can. Now the United States has announced a further step towards turning away from climate protection. The US environmental protection authority (EPA) officially proposed on Tuesday not to classify greenhouse gas emissions as harmful to health. This would be “the largest deregulative measure in the history of the United States,” said EPA boss Lee Zeldin at an event in a car dealership in the US state of Indiana.

Zeldin wants to tip the so -called “risk determination” (endangerment finding) from 2009. It is the legal basis for the fight against the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the USA. The rules for the CO2 emissions of vehicles and gas and coal-fired power plants go back to this.

Zeldin justified the plans in the podcast with economic arguments and criticism of the scientific basis at that time. He referred to technological progress and emphasized that climate protection must be compatible with economic growth. He argued that the risk determination was legally incorrect and caused serious economic damage.

The basis is a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2007, due to scientific knowledge, he decided that greenhouse gases were to be seen as air pollutants. The US environmental protection authority then declared greenhouse gases in 2009 to be harmful to health.

After another judgment of the Supreme Court of 2024, the EPA is not entitled to grant itself the right to proceed against greenhouse gases, Zeldin now said. If the congress adapted the federal law in question – the Clean Air Act -, the following will be achieved.

Before his announcement, Zeldin had declared in a podcast that the end of the regulation would save the US citizens. “With a view to the classification as a danger, it is said that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, and that was already it,” said Zeldin. “Never recognized any kind of benefit or necessity of carbon dioxide.” It is not recognized “how important it is for the planet”.

As the US portal “Axios” reported, critics warn that the Trump government’s plans contradict the scientific consensus on climate change and endangered existing climate protection requirements. According to Zeldin’s declaration, environmental associations immediately announced legal steps. According to the environmental agency, climate protectionists, other organizations and industry now have 45 days for a public statement.

Traffic is the largest CO2 causative in the United States. Dena Adler from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the University of New York therefore calls it “difficult to imagine” that vehicles are no longer considered to be a member of the climate change, as the government intends.

Already in Trump’s first term, the “risk determination” was contested in court, but had existed. The Trump government wants to return climate protection and expand fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil. After his swearing -in in January, Trump had signed a decree on the resignation from the Paris climate protection agreement of 2015. Already in Trump’s first term (2017 to 2021), the United States had withdrawn from the UN agreement.