EPA chief eliminates car start-stop feature after

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin eradicated requirements on regulating federal greenhouse gasoline emissions for autos. 

The administration particularly eliminated the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding, a legal framework that regulated greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and was issued during the Obama administration. It particularly discovered that carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, along with other greenhouse gases, “endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” The move to remove it is a step back against fighting climate change.

“This is about as big as it gets,” President Donald Trump said at the White House with Zeldin. “Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding.

 “No longer will automakers be pressured to shift their fleets towards electric vehicles,” Zeldin  said. He added that the current administration “is proudly fixing this stupid feature at Trump Speed.”

The 2009 EPA regulation was established after a 2007 U.S Supreme Court case, which found that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. 

Former President Barack Obama said on an X post that Thursday’s move will make people “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.” 

The Sierra Club, a national and the most important environmental group in the nation, said it “will do everything in our power to block this misguided effort that puts polluters before people.”

“Removing EPA’s authority to limit deadly greenhouse gas emissions is as shortsighted as it is reckless. Communities will suffer as extreme weather continues to threaten us all, costs will continue to rise, and we will saddle future generations with a world that grows increasingly unlivable and endangers the life we know,” the group’s Executive Director Loren Blackford said in a assertion. 

The group also flagged that eradicating the 2009 requirements might provoke more litigation against vehicle manufactures, fossil fuel firms and other sources of greenhouse gases which have been technically protected from lawsuits under the 2011 Supreme Court ruling. That case was an unanimous choice that firms can’t be sued over greenhouse emissions because the EPA had regulated those emission charges. 

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary said that the transfer “will be the largest deregulatory action in American history and it will save the American people $1.3 TRILLION in crushing regulation.”

“The bulk of the savings will stem from reduced costs for new vehicles, with the EPA projecting average per vehicle savings of more than $2,400 for popular light duty cars, SUVs and trucks. This is just one more way this administration is working to make life more affordable for everyday Americans overall. These groundbreaking actions from President Trump will drive larger economic growth, create thousands of good paying jobs, expand manufacturing, increase consumer choice and improve affordability for millions of families and businesses,” Leavitt added.