AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for the American Future recently submitted detailed comments strongly supporting the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to rescind the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding, calling the rescission a necessary correction of legal violations and regulatory overreach that has imposed massive costs on American families and businesses.
The comments, filed on behalf of Liberty Packing Company LLC, Nuckles Oil Co. Inc. dba Merit Oil Company, Western States Trucking Association, and Construction Industry Air Quality Coalition, outline multiple fundamental flaws with the Obama-era finding that classified greenhouse gases as harmful “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act.
“The Obama EPA violated federal law when it issued the Endangerment Finding without submitting it to the Science Advisory Board for required peer review,” said Ted Hadzi-Antich, senior attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for the American Future. “This procedural violation alone justifies rescission, but the finding also lacks the clear congressional authorization required for decisions of such vast economic and political significance under the Supreme Court’s Major Questions Doctrine.”
The Foundation’s 35-page comment filing details how EPA violated 42 U.S.C. § 4365(c)(1) by failing to submit the proposed rule to the Science Advisory Board for peer review. The comments also demonstrate how the finding violates the Major Questions Doctrine established in West Virginia v. EPA, noting that Congress has repeatedly considered and rejected greenhouse gas legislation, never providing clear authorization for such sweeping regulatory authority.
“The science underlying the 2009 finding was flawed from the start and is now definitively obsolete,” said Dr. Brent Bennett, policy director for Life:Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “The EPA was never able to show empirically that the moderate warming being caused by greenhouse gas emissions is endangering the public health, instead relying on fatally flawed climate models and outright speculation. We applaud the EPA and the accompanying DOE climate change report for finally recognizing the facts.”
The Endangerment Finding triggered a cascade of regulations affecting mining, manufacturing, transportation, construction, agriculture, and energy production. Recent EPA vehicle regulations based on the finding require at least 45% of trucks and 70% of cars to be all-electric by 2032, while previous attempts like the Clean Power Plan sought to force electricity generators away from reliable fossil fuels.
TPPF’s comments document severe and widespread damage across virtually every sector of the American economy, imposing billions in compliance costs while providing negligible climate benefits. TPPF’s analysis shows that eliminating all U.S. CO₂ emissions by 2050 would reduce global temperatures by just 0.082°C by 2100, with vehicle emissions representing only a fraction of that minimal impact.
The comments emphasize that greenhouse gases differ fundamentally from traditional air pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act. While pollutants like particulate matter cause direct harm to human health in local areas, CO₂ is essential to plant life, globally distributed, and affects climate indirectly over decades through uncertain mechanisms. Carbon dioxide cannot reasonably be considered an “air pollution agent” under the Clean Air Act’s definition requiring substances that “make or render impure or unclean.”
“Congress designed the Clean Air Act to regulate substances that directly harm human health, not essential atmospheric gases that support all life on Earth,” said Hadzi-Antich. “The finding represents an unprecedented expansion of federal regulatory power that Congress never authorized and the courts should not permit under current Supreme Court precedent.”
The comments also detail how EPA abdicated its scientific responsibilities by relying almost entirely on assessments from international organizations rather than conducting independent analysis. EPA acknowledged it “relied heavily” on work from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other non-governmental organizations as the “primary scientific and technical basis” for the finding.
“For 16 years, the Endangerment Finding and the regulations that rely upon it have imposed billions in costs to the economy—all without Congressional authorization,” added TPPF attorney Eric Heigis. “The Endangerment Finding had legal flaws from its inception. Recent Supreme Court cases demonstrate that EPA has no power to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.”
The commenters on whose behalf TPPF filed the comments represent businesses directly and adversely impacted by regulations stemming from the Endangerment Finding.