EPA needs to fulfill its mission to protect environment | Opinion
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule overturning its own “endangerment finding” on February 12, 2026. The finding — established after years of scientific analysis — that concluded that greenhouse gas pollution endangers human health and requires regulation.
The overturning of the endangerment finding was combined with the EPA’s repeal of emissions standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. The Administration celebrated this as the “Biggest Deregulatory Action in US History”.
Jonathan Patz published an Op-Ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 23, 2026 about why this matters for the Clean Air Act and the agencies regulatory capacity moving forward, the health impacts from delayed action on climate change, and the immediate damages to our heath from pollutants that are co-emitted with greenhouse gasses.
You can read the original article on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website. The article as since been picked up by Yahoo News and others.
Below you can also read the public comments submitted last fall from NASEM and an Expert Working Group on Climate Change and Health in the United States:
A National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) assessment that EPA’s 2009 finding that human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare was “accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.”
An “Expert Working Group on Climate Change and Health in the United States” comprising 114 climate-health scientists submitted 50 pages of scientific evidence based on a mountain of new studies (400+) published since 2009 that reinforces the strength of the Endangerment Finding.
Instead of disagreeing with the science, the EPA leadership chose a different legal procedure. So, for no scientific reasons given, the EPA is abandoning its obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately shirking its responsibility to protect Americans’ health from this clear environmental hazard.