GAIA condemns the Environmental Protection Agency‘s (EPA) official revocation of its 2009 Endangerment Finding (“Finding”) under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. The Finding was based on decades of overwhelming scientific evidence and legal precedent that greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) endanger public health and welfare. The administration argued that the Clean Air Act does not give it legal authority to regulate GHG, thereby destroying the legal foundation upon which vital climate protections were based.
By decoupling greenhouse gas emissions from the documented harm they do to human and environmental health, the administration is flinging open the door for massive deregulation at the federal level. Their initial stated intent for revoking the Finding is to gut motor vehicle emissions regulations. But it won’t stop there.
On Wednesday, the day before officially revoking the Finding, the administration continued to prop up the coal industry in an Executive Order requiring the Pentagon to source energy from coal-fired power plants, following up on their June 2025 proposed “Repeal of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units.”
For GAIA and our members working at the intersection of waste and environmental justice, this revocation will limit the tools we have to hold polluters accountable and to protect our communities, and especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities where polluting infrastructure is most often sited.
The waste sector is one of the biggest emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas with 82.5 times the warming potential of CO₂ over a 20-year period. Ending the Finding will take away the authority of the EPA to regulate methane and co-pollutants from landfills, incinerators, and other waste facilities. Additionally, this will stall progress toward true zero waste systems, such as organics diversion, composting, and nontoxic reuse, that cut methane at the source while advancing climate, health, and equity goals.
Plastics production and disposal are exponentially expanding GHG emitters. If plastics were a country, it would be the world’s fifth-largest GHG emitter. Without EPA authority to regulate GHG emissions, the plastics and petrochemical industry will be free to expand all of the processes–including pyrolysis and gasification–that release extensive GHG emissions, in addition to using toxic chemicals.
This decision is so egregious that numerous organizations have promised to sue the administration, which GAIA fully supports.