Climate leaders condemn Trump EPA’s biggest rollback yet: ‘This is corruption’

Climate leaders gathered outside the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters on Wednesday to condemn the Trump administration’s plans to repeal the legal finding underpinning all federal climate regulations, and promised to fight against the rollback.

“This is corruption, plain and simple. Old fashioned, dirty political corruption,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, senator for Rhode Island, at the rally. “This is an agency that has been so infiltrated by the corrupt fossil fuel industry that it has turned an agency of government into the weapon of the fossil fuel polluters.”

The rescinding of the 2009 endangerment finding will be finalized by Donald Trump and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week. The seminal ruling established the legal basis to regulate planet-warming pollution under the Clean Air Act.

The Trump administration has defended its rollbacks of regulations, arguing they can protect the environment while boosting the economy and lowering energy costs.

The administration is calling it the “largest deregulatory action in American history” and claims it will save Americans $1.3tn, though did not explain how officials arrived at that number. In an emailed statement, an EPA spokesperson said the endangerment finding was used to “justify trillions of dollars of greenhouse gas regulations covering new vehicles and engines”

Experts warn it could pose trillions in climate damages and healthcare costs.

At Wednesday’s gathering, environmental nonprofits including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Earthjustice and Sierra Club pledged to file litigation over the forthcoming rollback.

“We’re going to be taking this fight to the courts, and we are going to win,” said Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts also promised that he and Whitehouse would highlight the issue in the Senate, while New York Congress member Paul Tonko said he would do the same on the floor of Congress.

The move comes a year and a half after Trump on the campaign trail reportedly requested $1bn from oil bosses, promising he would scrap environmental rules if elected.

“[Zeldin] is saying to the fossil fuel industry, you now are gonna get what you paid for,” said Markey at the gathering. “This is cash and carry: You give us the cash, and then we carry away all of the environmental protections.”

The plan to kill the endangerment finding is “terrifying”, said Talia Brandt, a 10-year-old Maryland resident and member of environmental health organization Moms Clean Air Force, who appeared at the rally with her mother, Liz.

“We shouldn’t have to be here fighting for our future,” she said.

The endangerment finding was based on a large body of peer-reviewed research and has repeatedly defended and upheld in federal courts. Since it was codified, the evidence showing greenhouse gas emissions endanger society has only gotten stronger, said Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of EPA’s office of air and radiation at EPA.

“Science did not change when Donald Trump was inaugurated,” said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the endangerment finding. “What did change was the arrival of the new EPA management, determined to destroy the agency’d public health and environmental mission.”

The forthcoming killing of the endangerment finding comes as part of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda to deregulate energy and boost fossil fuels. On Wednesday, the president signed an executive order directing the defense department to procure more power from coal, the most polluting and planet-warming fossil fuel.

“Clean, beautiful coal is not only keeping the lights on in our country but also driving down the cost of electricity across the country as well,” Leavitt said on Tuesday.

On the same day, the president was awarded the inaugural “Undisputed Champion of Coal” title from the Washington Coal Club – a DC-based pro-coal industry organization – for his efforts to roll back federal climate regulations.

“I think Trump’s children and the Trump family will live to be ashamed of that award,” Whitehouse told the Guardian in an interview before the rally.

The coal industry poured $3.5m into efforts to elect Trump in 2024. Reports show the president’s efforts to keep aging coal plants open could push up already soaring energy bills nationwide.

In an interview with the Guardian, Markey said the Trump administration’s attack on environmental rules – and the opposition to that attack – is “making climate change an issue again” across America.

“This is going to put climate change right back on the front burner of American politics,” Markey said. “They’re really going to regret what they’re doing, because the Republicans are going to pay a big political price.”

While the “billionaire class” benefits from the rollback of the endangerment finding, vulnerable people will be harmed the most, Manuel Salgado, federal research manager at environmental justice nonprofit We Act for Environmental Justice, said at the rally.

“These modern day robber barons would gladly add to their already obscene piles of wealth by making us less safe from climate change,” he said. “We will not let this continue to happen.”