by Edward Ring
Ending EPA’s endangerment finding curbs climate-driven micromanagement, aiming to safeguard affordable energy, expand housing, and keep U.S. competitiveness anchored in abundance.
On February 12, the Trump Administration formally repealed the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” that gave the EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from virtually anything that used energy, including vehicles, power plants, factories, dairy farms, landfills, fertilizer, rice paddies, tractors, air conditioners, refrigerators, etc.
Reactions were swift. From CBS News, “an enormous blow to public health protection and the fight against climate change.” From The Guardian, “The Trump administration has dismantled the basis for all US climate regulations in its most confrontational anti-environment move yet.” And from the New York Times, “Trump Erased a Bedrock Climate Rule. Here Come the Lawsuits.”
And on the topic of lawsuits, one of the premier purveyors of lawsuits, the Sierra Club, had this to say: “Environmental Groups Vow to Stop Trump’s EPA From Revoking the Endangerment Finding.” Joining these environmental groups will be a powerful coalition of blue states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who, in a press release also issued on February 12, “Denounces EPA’s Rescission of Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, Vows to Sue.”
The sweeping impact of this repeal is likely to spawn endless lawsuits from places like California, a state where climate policy has come to dominate all policy. Obvious targets for California’s zealous climate enforcers have been the oil and natural gas industries. But anything that may increase energy consumption is a target. That has included, for example, any attempts to build “low-density” housing, now defined in California as any single-family detached home with fewer than 10 units per acre.
If you’ve sat in a planning commission meeting in California and watched a developer face down a county supervisor who wants to know how they can possibly justify building homes with yards (gasp! yards!) now that there is a climate emergency, you will see how extreme “climate mitigation” has become. Most land in the state is off-limits to building. Where new housing still rises, people are packed on top of each other. From legacy redoubts, on spacious estates, the message from California’s elite climate warriors is clear: stack and pack housing for you and for us, gated, bucolic neighborhoods where ribbons of pavement bend through tranquil expanses of manicured lawns, and mansions nestle among mature stands of redwood and oak.
The reason California has the most expensive housing and the most expensive energy in America is because the state is determined to be a global leader in fighting climate change. And now, thanks to an enduring consensus among California’s elites that we face a climate emergency regardless of whether the current federal administration agrees, the disparity between what housing and energy costs in California vs. other states in America is going to widen. Private investors will gravitate even more to red states that want cheap energy. California’s taxpayers, on the other hand, will pony up additional billions to subsidize renewable projects that cannot compete in a deregulated market.
Politico’s reporting on the repeal of the EPA’s endangerment finding took a more subtle approach, noting that the Trump administration’s announcement didn’t actually argue that “the science underpinning current climate policy is wrong.” We are expected to take this as evidence that Trump’s people endorse a consensus that there is a climate emergency. In fact, as Politico sort of acknowledged, the reason the repeal didn’t highlight recent research that contradicts the alleged consensus that we face a climate emergency was simply to avoid handing environmentalists another avenue for litigation.
By sidelining the question of whether or not greenhouse gases cause runaway destructive climate change, the Trump administration has disconnected that scientific debate from challenges to the repeal of the EPA endangerment finding. In some respects, that’s too bad, because that debate has intensified in recent months and could use more sunlight. In July 2025, the Department of Energy released a study, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate,” that questioned the centrality of CO₂ and other anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in driving climate change. While the study was condemned by the climate science “community,” support for resuming the debate and reassessing policy priorities with respect to energy and climate has come from unexpected quarters.
For example, Bill Gates, the billionaire investor and founder of Microsoft, recently offered this bit of revisionist thinking on the topic, saying that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” and that “people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future.”
It would be naive to think much of the “consensus” over climate change is purely driven by objective science. There is a stunning amount of government money pouring into “climate science.” Federal funding for climate research is estimated at $2.4 billion per year. Pressure to adhere to the consensus is related to renewing funding. Dr. Judith Curry, one of the scientists who participated in the DOE review of greenhouse gas inputs, explained the consequences of groupthink to Politico, saying, “Politicized science and a manufactured consensus on complex and deeply uncertain science will invariably mislead policymakers and lead to poor policymaking.”
Something President Trump has said repeatedly bears repeating in this moment. His reasons for downplaying, if not dismissing, the urgency of climate change come down to two related concerns, both of which are far bigger policy priorities. The first is simply the threat of nuclear war. It is fine that we discuss and weigh the risks and benefits of ongoing use of fossil fuels and how it may affect life on earth in ten, twenty, fifty, or one hundred years from now. But meanwhile, the possibility of rogue use of a nuclear weapon, or worse, is imminent. It could happen tomorrow. Managing global tensions and settling as many of them as possible comes well before concerns about greenhouse gases.
The second concern is the primacy of energy as a driver of prosperity and national vitality. The average cost of electricity in the United States is $0.18 per kilowatt-hour. In nations where climate policies have taken hold, the price is more than twice as much. Electricity in Germany and the UK costs $0.40 per kilowatt-hour. California weighs in with prices comparable to those in these European nations, with prices in February 2026 averaging $0.35 per kilowatt-hour. And what about China? Unsurprisingly, their electricity averages $0.08 per kilowatt-hour, the lowest of all major nations. This is a country that is serious about national power.
The Trump administration recognizes the centrality of energy costs to human flourishing, a goal that is furthered when people can afford single-family homes with yards where they can raise children. In California, detached homes on lots big enough to include backyards are allegedly creators of greenhouse gases, since the residents have to use their cars more often to get from point to point in a low-density environment. This is the sort of obsessive, misanthropic nonsense that the Trump administration has rejected by repealing the endangerment finding.
The administration also understands, with a clarity its opponents lack, that micromanaging and restricting literally all economic activity according to its carbon impact is a path to national decline in a world that is more competitive and perilous than ever.
Edward Ring is a senior fellow of the Center for American Greatness. He is also
the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy
Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president.
Ring is the author of Fixing California: Abundance, Pragmatism, Optimism
(2021) and The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California
(2022).
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/02/18/trump-repeals-epas-endangerment-finding-preserving-affordable-energy-and-housing/
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