Center for Regulatory Freedom Calls on EPA to Overturn Climate Rule: “It’s Time to End This Regulatory Fiction”

At a transformational moment for U.S. environmental and energy policy, Andrew Langer and Kiley McLeroy of the CPAC Foundation’s Center for Regulatory Freedom appeared before the Environmental Protection Agency today. They urged the agency to rescind the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding—describing it as a rule built on shaky science, bloated costs, and a legal foundation that was never properly tested.

The EPA’s public hearing was convened to review the continued validity of the Endangerment Finding, the regulatory cornerstone that since 2009 has allowed the agency to treat carbon dioxide (CO₂) as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. This rule empowered sweeping greenhouse gas regulations across virtually every sector of the economy—from power generation to manufacturing to transportation—and has been the linchpin of decades of climate policy.

But according to Langer and McLeroy, the costs of maintaining this framework have become too great, the scientific basis too fragile, and the economic risks too severe for the agency to ignore.

“By treating carbon dioxide—an odorless, non-toxic gas essential for plant life—as a regulated pollutant, the EPA triggered a regulatory chain reaction that’s hammered households and industries alike.”— Andrew Langer

A Regulatory Web With Enormous Costs

In his testimony, Andrew Langer, Director of the Center for Regulatory Freedom, painted a stark picture of the economic fallout caused by the Endangerment Finding.

“Since 2009, this single determination has laid the groundwork for layers upon layers of costly mandates,” Langer told agency officials. “Power plants, manufacturers, transportation systems, even financial markets have been swept into a regulatory dragnet.”

He cited data showing how electricity prices in states with aggressive EPA-driven greenhouse gas programs now soar well above national averages. “That means working families, seniors on fixed incomes, and low-income households are paying the price for a regulatory scheme that’s supposed to save the planet, yet does nothing measurable to global emissions,” he said.

“Households in states with aggressive EPA greenhouse gas mandates now pay electricity rates far above the national average, punishing working families and retirees.”— Andrew Langer

The hit to American industry has been equally severe. Langer detailed how manufacturing plants have closed or moved operations overseas to escape costly compliance rules, taking jobs with them. “The local impact? Lost jobs, shuttered plants, hollowed-out communities,” he said. “Meanwhile the net global effect is essentially zero, since production simply shifts to countries with even looser environmental standards.”

These policies, he warned, have effectively exported emissions, not reduced them. Worse still, they’ve left the U.S. more vulnerable.

“That’s not environmental stewardship. That’s trading domestic resilience for geopolitical risk.”— Andrew Langer

A Fragile, Foreign-Dependent Energy Grid

Beyond direct costs, Langer argued the regulatory regime flowing from the Endangerment Finding has weakened America’s energy grid.

“Premature closures of coal and gas power plants, driven by CO₂ rules, have left us without secure replacements,” he explained. “We’ve built a grid that’s more fragile, more dependent on imports, long-distance transmission lines, and the whims of weather.”

This, he stressed, creates serious national security risks. As the nation ramps up solar and wind generation, it grows more dependent on critical minerals and battery components controlled by foreign powers. “We’re tying our economic future to foreign-controlled supply chains. That’s reckless policy masquerading as climate virtue,” Langer said.

“We’ve built a grid that’s more fragile and increasingly tied to foreign-controlled supply chains for critical minerals needed for batteries and solar. That’s not resilience—it’s strategic folly.”— Andrew Langer

The Scope 3 Quagmire

Langer also pointed to emerging rules like California’s Scope 3 emissions disclosures and SEC carbon footprint mandates. These rules, which trace their legal justification back to the original EPA finding that CO₂ is a dangerous pollutant, force companies to calculate and report emissions across their entire supply chains.

“The compliance costs are staggering,” Langer said. “Small suppliers face liability traps they can’t afford. Entire business models are being upended, all in service of a regulatory narrative that CO₂ poses an imminent threat. That narrative starts with this Endangerment Finding.”

Science Without Transparency

Kiley McLeroy, a policy analyst at CRF, focused her testimony on what she called the “deeply flawed scientific foundation” of the Endangerment Finding.

“The scientific and technical analysis underpinning the 2009 Endangerment Finding is not rigorously scientific or technical at all.”— Kiley McLeroy

McLeroy criticized the EPA for building its case largely on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports—documents she argued are highly politicized and riddled with errors.

She noted that the IPCC’s fourth assessment report supplied most of the data that underpinned the EPA’s original Technical Support Document. “That report was exposed for intentionally skewing data to influence global climate policy,” McLeroy said. “It also lacked scientific repeatability and failed to maintain an apolitical peer review process.”

“The IPCC purposely excludes authors that dispute the hypothesized link between human emissions and harm, making the basis for the 2009 Endangerment Finding a biased, policy-driven determination.”— Kiley McLeroy

She also highlighted infamous mistakes that were once held up as smoking guns for climate action—like the claim that Himalayan glaciers would vanish by 2035 or that more than half of the Netherlands was below sea level in 2009. “These were key data points used to justify global regulatory urgency, and they’ve been thoroughly debunked,” McLeroy said.

No Clear Quantifiable Threat

McLeroy argued that the most critical failing of the Endangerment Finding is that it never firmly established the degree to which rising temperatures pose a quantifiable threat to public health.

“The measured impact of rising global temperatures on the overall health of the public should be the most important piece of scientific evidence in promulgating emissions regulations.”— Kiley McLeroy

Instead, she said, even the EPA has admitted that risks and potential impacts of climate change cannot be consistently quantified or characterized with uniform metrics. “This means the projected impact on public health is unclear, yet we’ve imposed trillions in regulatory burdens based on vague suppositions,” McLeroy noted.

A Legal House of Cards

Both Langer and McLeroy stressed that maintaining the Endangerment Finding in its current form violates bedrock principles of administrative law.

Under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Clean Air Act, agencies must ground rules in valid, transparent, objective evidence—and revisit regulations when new material challenges arise. But Langer pointed to multiple petitions filed by groups like CHECC and FAIR that included peer-reviewed studies debunking the climate models behind the finding.

“Those petitions were summarily dismissed. No independent expert review. No rigorous reexamination. Just bureaucratic insulation,” Langer said.

He also highlighted that the D.C. Circuit Court never ruled on the actual science. “Those cases were tossed on procedural grounds—standing and timing. Meaning this foundational rule, which reshaped trillions in economic activity, has never been tested in court on the merits.”

A New Policy Mandate

Their appearance today comes on the heels of President Trump’s Executive Order 14154, which directs federal agencies to reassess regulations that impose major economic burdens based on outdated or contested science.

McLeroy emphasized that there is no statutory barrier to rescinding the Endangerment Finding, which was initially made almost entirely at the EPA Administrator’s discretion. “It is not a law or statute, yet it has been treated as binding since inception,” she said. “Continuing to maintain its statutory relevance is counterproductive to American energy dominance and the resurgence of domestic manufacturing.”

“There is no reason, scientific or legal, that this finding should continue to shape emissions regulations. We urge this administration to make a new finding grounded in sound science, reasonable public policy, and the plain meaning of the Clean Air Act.”— Kiley McLeroy

The Bottom Line

In closing, Langer offered the following:

“Keeping this Endangerment Finding in place not only sustains enormous costs on American households and businesses; it violates bedrock administrative law by clinging to a regulatory framework long after its empirical foundation has collapsed.”

He urged the EPA to act decisively, calling rescission not merely prudent but essential. “It is a legal and economic imperative to protect U.S. families, industry, and the security of our energy systems,” Langer concluded.