Ending EPA’s clean air rule will poison environment

Published 1:30 am Friday, August 8, 2025

On July 29, Lee Zeldin, head of Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced his intent to revoke the endangerment finding. This rule, adopted by the agency in 2009, gives the EPA authority to declare that greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles and power plants pose a serious threat to human health. Since its adoption this finding has been the basis of major regulatory decisions by EPA that have limited numerous chemical pollutants, including mercury, methane, sulphur dioxide, and carbon dioxide. Without this regulatory authority our air would be much more polluted and dangerous than it already is.

Further, as numerous environmental organizations have stated, revoking this authority would also limit future administrations and EPA directors from limiting these dangerous gases, thus condemning future generations, especially children, the most vulnerable among us, to living enveloped in an increasingly lethal mixture of poisonous chemicals emitted from power plants, vehicles, and factories.

Zeldin, in short, wants to re-poison the entire United States to please polluting industries that detest any regulatory interference. Never mind the consequences to human health! Think of your children and grandchildren; what kind of environment do you want them to inherit?

Zeldin calls his proposal “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” It is also the most lethal! We must do everything we can to stop this reckless proposal! Write to the EPA, your elected representatives, and contribute to environmental organizations striving to stop this insanity. Now!

Michael W. Shurgot

Seattle