Michael Barbaro

My colleague, Lisa Friedman, has spent the past few weeks piecing together the inside story of how a small group of activists turned that once improbable goal into reality.

It's Thursday, February 12th.

Lisa, welcome back to The Daily.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

So over the summer, Lisa, you broke the story that the Trump administration was planning to roll back the legal basis for the entire government's ability to regulate greenhouse gases.

Just remind us what that legal basis was and why its elimination would be so consequential.

Sure.

It's called the endangerment finding.

And you can think of it like the spine of America's ability to regulate climate pollutants.

Congress never explicitly told the EPA that it could regulate planet warming emissions.

But in 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in a landmark ruling, it's called Massachusetts versus EPA, that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the law.

And because EPA is required to set limits, required to regulate damaging pollutants, the court told the agency, you need to determine whether these greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane, others, whether they endanger health and welfare.

Two years later, the EPA, citing a massive body of scientific evidence, came out with

what is now called the endangerment finding, that six greenhouse gases do pose a danger to public health and the environment.

And therefore should be regulated.

And therefore should be regulated.

So if you think of the endangerment finding as the spine, that is what has allowed for regulations on carbon emissions from automobiles, from power plant smokestacks, methane from oil and gas well leaks, etc.

And if you repeal the endangerment finding, as the Trump administration is about to do, then there is no basis, there is no legal basis or scientific basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The government essentially gives up its authority.