New rules for greenhouse gases
Trump puts on the ax
Updated on July 30th, 2025 – 9:52 a.m.Reading time: 5 min.
There is a risk of a massive setback for climate protection: the Trump government is serious in its fight against environmental protection requirements.
Lee Zeldin had chosen an unusual place for his explanation. The head of the American environmental protection authority Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stood in the hall of a truck dealer in the US state of Indiana on Tuesday. Behind him were huge heavy trucks of a well-known US manufacturer. Then Zeldin made an announcement that could possibly have far -reaching consequences for the climate.
Zeldin announced that his authority would apply not to classify greenhouse gas emissions as harmful to health. “With regard to the regulations for the emissions of greenhouse gases (this application), the guidelines for small, medium and heavy trucks not only turn back – he will completely abolish them,” said Trump’s environmental protection officer. And it also made it clear what this would mean: “This application is an application that will abolish the risk assessment and which will completely abolish the standards for the emissions of greenhouse gases.”
The so -called “risk determination” is at stake – and thus the legal basis for the fight against the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the USA. In 1970 the US Congress authorized the environmental protection authority EPA with a law, the Clean Air Act, “air pollution that can reasonably endanger public health”. For decades, the law for pollutants such as lead, ozone and soot.
With the growing scientific knowledge that greenhouse gases lead to global warming, the pressure on the EPA also grew to limit its emissions – especially for cars and trucks. In 2007 the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases were considered air pollutants and indicated the environmental protection authority to also take them into account. The EPA then explained greenhouse gases in 2009 as harmful to health.
Since then, this decision, known as “endangerment finding” (“risk assessment”), has been the legal basis for many regulations to combat climate change. Specifications for cars up to regulations for gas and coal-fired power plants “go back to this 2009 statement,” says Meredith Hankins from the non-governmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council. With their abolition, the Trump administration would put the ax on one of the essential pillars of climate protection in the USA.
“This would be one of the most serious measures in general – really – in the entire history of the Environmental Protection Agency,” said Vickie Patton, from the Environmental Defense Fund environmental protection organization, “if the government actually implements it and simply stops protecting the American people from some of the most dangerous pollutants in our lives”. The effects of climate -damaging greenhouse gases include heat waves, heavy fires, floods, landslides, but also the health risks of smog and soot through vehicles.
The Trump administration is apparently about rejecting a further achievement of democratic predecessors. “The regulations were misused by the EPA under the Obama government as a political instrument without having stated (scientific) evidence. This was caused by American competitiveness,” added Indiana’s Republican governor Mike Brown.
Already in Trump’s first term, the “risk determination” was contested in court, but had existed. America’s automotive industry, but also oil companies, have been defending themselves against the environmental protection standards that they think have been defending for years.
“We have heard the concerns loudly and clearly,” Zeldin said in a statement, including the influence on the influence of the automotive industry, against the standards, “the (strict) rules of the EPA in terms of greenhouse gases, not only those for carbon dioxide, whose influence was never really examined, are the greatest threat to the prosperity of the Americans”.
