By Alicia Colegrove
University of Maryland students and faculty expressed concern following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s rescission of the Obama-era finding that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health.
The 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding defined greenhouse gases as a threat to public welfare and was a prerequisite for regulating emissions from motor vehicles. Greenhouse gases are gases that trap the sun’s heat near the planet’s surface, like water vapor, methane and carbon dioxide, according to NASA. With the rescission, the EPA officially repealed all greenhouse gas emissions standards for motor vehicles.
Samuel Krakower, a senior history major and president of the American Conservation Coalition at UMD, expressed his frustration with the ruling.
“I’m very disappointed. I am fairly angry, and I am very upset,” Krakower said. “This regulation, obviously, wasn’t just for funsies.”
Krakower said that ignoring the harmful effects of greenhouse gases has a big effect on the way the United States is seen on a global stage. He argued that the international community needs important leadership when handling climate change.
“The United States has always been framing themselves as the leader of the free world,” Krakower said.
Karly Matthews, vice president of communications at the American Conservation Coalition, wrote in an email to Stories Beneath the Shell that the coalition submitted a public comment to the Department of Energy in response to a recent report, which “reignited the debate.”
While “ACC appreciates the DOE’s efforts to foster open and honest dialogue around climate science, we also urge the administration to focus on leading with bold, forward-looking solutions to the climate challenge,” the statement reads. “Unlike the mainstream environmental movement—and past attempts to address this issue — ACC recognizes that there is a path to American energy dominance, economic prosperity, and lower emissions.”
President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20, 2025, withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change aiming to limit global warming.
Assata Makonnen, a sophomore environmental science and policy major, said the EPA’s decision did not shock her because of the administration’s history of rescaling environmental policies.
She pointed to the fossil fuel and oil industries as explanations for downsizing, and said Trump has scaled back clean energy initiatives to focus on the oil industry.
Makonnen said she believes these policies can lead to a dangerous slope of deregulation.
“It felt as if we were sliding backward in terms of environmental progress,” Makonnen said.
The EPA said that the rescission is the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history and claimed it will save Americans $1.3 trillion.
Krakower argued that the average American may stand to lose money under the current policy due to natural disasters.
“The other thing you need to take into account is environmental damages. We are seeing bigger storms, we’re seeing mass forest fires,” Krakower said. “That costs money to clean up after.”
Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental Science and Technology, said that the severity of the ruling’s effects will depend on the states.
“[If] this ruling stands, what that would do is it would pretty much take the ability of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases away, and it would sort of push that towards the states,” Pavao-Zuckerman said. “So I think there would be an impact on our emissions to push them up. But how severe that will be will kind of rely on how things play out.”
States like Maryland, California and New York have their own policies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Since emissions are no longer federally regulated, it will be up to the states to define their own standards — a task that Pavao-Zuckerman says can be difficult without the EPA’s support. He said that states without strong policies “can see an increase in emissions.”
The larger effects of the EPA’s decision to repeal the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding remain to be seen.
Featured Image: The exterior of the Animal Sciences and Agricultural Engineering building on Feb. 19. Photo by Miller Rogers-Tetrick.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to include a portion of the “ACC Public Comment to DoE on Climate Report,” sent to Stories Beneath the Shell by Karly Matthews, vice president of communications at the American Conservation Coalition.