Nature News · Feb 12, 2026 · Collected from RSS
A ruling by the US Environmental Protection Agency opens the door to loosening limits on greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles.Credit: Kevin Carter/GettyThe US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has revoked the ‘endangerment finding’, a cornerstone of the nation’s efforts to curb emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases. Its reversal means that, for the first time in 17 years, the EPA will no longer consider greenhouse gases a threat to public health and welfare. EPA head Lee Zeldin said the move would save the United States money by removing excess regulations, but critics say it will endanger more lives as climate change intensifies.The landmark 2009 endangerment finding served as the legal underpinning for US regulations to limit emissions. For now, the EPA is capitalizing on the repeal to roll back emissions rules for cars, trucks and other vehicles, but might later apply it to other sectors, such as power production. By several estimates, ending vehicle regulations alone will add billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere in the coming decades.Controversial climate report from Trump team galvanizes scientists into actionFederal law requires the EPA to make decisions on the basis of the best-available science, but today’s action is “is a rejection of the most basic laws of physics”, says Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College London and head of the World Weather Attribution project, which studies the links between extreme weather and human-caused climate change.“There is no legitimate scientific rationale” for the decision, says Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University in College Station.While announcing the decision on Thursday, Zeldin did not address the science of climate change, but focused on what he called “the single largest act of deregulation” in the country’s history. “The red tape has been cut,” he said. Environmental groups are sure to challenge the action, and the lawsuits might eventually reach the Supreme Court.Another rollbackThe decision is consistent with other actions by the administration of President Donald Trump, a Republican, to roll back action on climate change and the planet-heating emissions that cause it. Among other measures, the administration has withdrawn from the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change and opened US public lands to oil exploration and coal mining.The endangerment finding “has nothing to do with public health,” said Trump, speaking with Zeldin at the White House announcement. “This was a rip-off of the country.”In earlier justifications for revoking the finding, the EPA cited a July report written by a panel of academics who are known for criticizing climate science and were appointed by US energy secretary Chris Wright. The report downplays the risks of climate change and questions established evidence for global warming.A team of more than 85 scientists submitted a detailed critique of the work, and the panel has since been disbanded. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the panel had been illegally assembled out of public view. The Department of Energy did not respond to questions from Nature asking about the panel’s legitimacy.In its final ruling, released on Thursday, the EPA did not invoke the report to justify its change. That’s a significant shift in strategy and a sign that scientists’ push-back on the Wright-appointed panel worked, says Adam Orford, a legal scholar at Fordham University in New York City. Instead, the EPA is invoking legal arguments that the agency does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.Agency authority lostThe endangerment finding allowed the EPA to implement a wide variety of pollution-control measures, such as strict fuel-efficiency standards for cars and emissions limits on power plants. Rollback of the endangerment finding hugely limits the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon emissions, critics say. “This is the biggest attack ever on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis,” says Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group in New York City.Coral die-off marks Earth’s first climate ‘tipping point’, scientists say