Michael Barbaro

But what's also true is that every bit of emissions that enters the atmosphere leads to more warming, which leads to more health impacts,

and all of the things that we know continue to endanger human health and the environment.

Scientists say that that research is even more ironclad today than it was in 2009.

Then there's the Trump administration's legal arguments for repealing the endangerment finding.

There's a couple.

Take a step back.

The endangerment finding, that flowed from a law, the 1970 Clean Air Act.

This EPA is arguing that the Clean Air Act

only allows EPA to regulate what it calls local and regional pollutants.

Things like soot from industrial sources, factories, power plants, stuff that's really bad when you breathe it in.

Greenhouse gas emissions don't work that way.

Carbon dioxide, methane, you know, all these gases, they disperse into the atmosphere.

They trap heat.

They linger from decades to centuries and alter the climate.

So this EPA is making the argument that it just does not have the legal authority to deal with those kinds of, let's call them global pollutants.

Interesting.

So their argument is that the endangerment finding misunderstands the Clean Air Act and thinks that you can regulate greenhouse gases that by definition are not local.

They end up in the sky.

They end up far from their original source.

And therefore, the endangerment finding is not legally sound.