WASHINGTON— President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency today formally proposed gutting tailpipe pollution standards and rescinding the “endangerment finding” — the landmark scientific finding that planet-heating pollution harms public health and welfare.

“The EPA is killing the biggest single step any nation has taken to save oil, save consumers money at the pump, and combat global warming,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign. “American families will suffer long-term harms so that giant auto and oil companies can pocket short-term profits. They’re popping champagne corks at the OPEC and GM headquarters but also in Beijing, where China’s EV makers will face no competition from the U.S. to dominate the world’s clean car market.”

Both the clean car standards to reduce pollution from cars and trucks and the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding were based on overwhelming scientific evidence that has only become more robust.

“Trump is driving the country backwards into a dead end of dirty oil and filthy air,” said Becker. “It’s not enough that Trump is making war for oil abroad, he’s also stoking oil demand at home by pushing for more gas guzzlers.”

“The Trump administration justifies this assault on science and our health by falsely claiming that U.S. climate-heating pollution doesn’t matter and that it lacks the authority to cut it,” said Becker. “That’s a lie, and any 6-year-old knows it’s wrong to lie.”

The United States is the second-largest carbon polluter in the world after China, and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases. The U.S. emitted 11% of the world’s greenhouse gases in 2021, and during Trump’s first term his administration admitted that emissions in excess of 3% were “significant.”

Revoking lifesaving and gas-saving clean air standards that slash auto pollution will allow automakers to make cars that guzzle more gas and pollute more. It will force consumers to pay more at the gas pump.

The vehicle rules Trump plans to scrap would cut 7 billion metric tons of emissions and save the average American driver $6,000 in fuel and maintenance costs over the lifetimes of the vehicles made under the standards.

“Rescinding the endangerment finding will make it harder for federal agencies to take steps to cut heat-trapping greenhouse gas pollution from cars, trucks, power plants, factories and agriculture,” said Becker. “This lawless decision was precooked to benefit polluters. Trump is giving his Big Oil and Big Auto toadies a giant gift while the rest of us get more extreme storms, heart disease and asthma.”