For yearsbra, the fossil fuel industry and its allies have tried to overturn one of the most important federal rulings in the history of climate policy: the one that requires the government to limit greenhouse gases.
They lobbied. They sued. And so far they’ve failed.
But in President Trump, they have a new ally in their campaign against the rule, known as the endangerment finding. The finding empowers the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, because they endanger human life.
On his first day in the White House, Mr. Trump ordered the E.P.A. administrator and other agency leaders to make a recommendation within 30 days on the “legality and continued applicability” of the endangerment finding, setting up an early clash over the science of climate change.
Since the E.P.A. has an obligation to regulate pollutants that harm human health, eliminating the endangerment finding would debilitate the agency’s authority to curb emissions from automobile exhaust, power plants, oil and gas wells, factories and more.
“This is going to happen,” said Steven J. Milloy, a former Trump transition adviser, referring to the overturning of the endangerment finding. Mr. Milloy,fef777 cassino who denies the established science of climate change and has been encouraging the new administration to reverse the finding, said that without it, “all the federal government climate stuff kind of melts away.”
Lee Zeldin, Mr. Trump’s pick for E.P.A. administrator, did not address the matter head-on during his confirmation hearing. In written answers to the committee, reviewed by The New York Times, he pledged to “learn from E.P.A. career staff about the current state of the science on greenhouse gas emissions and follow all legal requirements,” and said, “I acknowledge that there are many who endorse the endangerment finding and others who have concerns about it.”
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Now a revival is at hand. Microsoft, which needs tremendous amounts of electricity for its growing fleet of data centers, has agreed to buy as much power as it can from the plant for 20 years. Constellation plans to spend $1.6 billion to refurbish the reactor that recently closed and restart it by 2028, pending regulatory approval.
Ms. Thomas may be different from legions of more fatalistic Mets fans, who brace for disaster on any given pitch. But maybe her time is finally here again.
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