As the Trump administration kills the legal basis for federal climate policy, Bay Area environmental advocates are among the lawyers and plaintiffs in the first two lawsuits filed against the action.
They’ve been preparing for this fight for nearly a year.
The environmentalists are battling to save the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” a scientific determination that greenhouse gases put human health at risk. That’s what mandated the EPA to regulate and reduce vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
‘Endangerment’, explained
The EPA’s endangerment finding required the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases. Here’s how it came about. (Via The Conversation)
Last week, the agency revoked it. Standing alongside President Donald J. Trump in the White House, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin called it “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” Andres Restrepo, senior attorney at the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, called it “the biggest retreat from climate action from any presidency.”
Trump first hinted at his plans to go after the endangerment finding early last year, says David Pettit, a California-based lawyer with the Climate Law Institute at the Center for Biological Diversity. The national advocacy group is part of a coalition of 17 organizations that sued the EPA on Wednesday morning. Other coalition members include Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the Sierra Club, which is headquartered in Oakland.
Two national public-interest legal nonprofits, Our Children’s Trust and Public Justice, also filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of 18 children and young adults who say the loss of the endangerment finding infringes on their constitutional rights. “[The plaintiffs] are willing to do whatever it takes to protect their lives,” says Julia Olson, the Berkeley-based chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust. At least two of the young plaintiffs are also based in the Bay Area.
The Bay Area ties aren’t coincidental. “There’s a lot of deep roots of environmental organizations here in the Bay Area … involved in petitioning EPA to do the endangerment finding,” says Olson. She notes that testimony on carbon pollution from Bay Area-based researchers, like Stanford atmospheric sciences professor Mark Jacobson, was foundational to the 2009 rule.
Now, governments, individuals, and groups across the region worry that the walkback on federal climate policy will harm local people—and local nature. Just last month, record-high king tides flooded low-lying streets from San Francisco’s Embarcadero to Marin County’s Highway 37. Meanwhile, local cities are making plans for managing sea level rise—including trying to decide what not to save.
More than 31,000 individuals and groups submitted some 572,000 public comments on the proposed axing of the endangerment finding. Among the comments were many from Bay Area groups and leaders who argued that the success of local climate action depends on the federal policy. “Without strong federal action to curb transportation emissions, our efforts will be overwhelmed,” Berkeley Mayor Adena Ishii wrote. Philip Fine, director of the Bay Area Air District, wrote that the change could hamper “decades of progress toward cleaner air and a safer climate.” Tyrone Jue, director of the San Francisco Environment Department, noted the department relies on the federal endangerment finding to shape clean energy investments. “This is not simply a regulatory dispute. It is a moral decision,” he commented.
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Dozens of Bay Area residents wrote comments, describing how they’ve seen the region’s climate changing. At least five separate commenters from the Bay Area described standing under orange skies in 2020, as smoke from the climate change-exacerbated North Complex fire blanketed the Bay Area.
As the lawsuits begin to wend through the courts, the EPA has already repealed its emission standards for cars, trucks, and other highway vehicles, effective immediately. Abandoning vehicle emissions—the biggest U.S. source of greenhouse gases—could just be the start, experts speculate. “If that kind of argument is accepted by the courts, then it will certainly be easier for EPA to say, well, power plants, it’s the same thing,” says Sean Donahue, a San Francisco-based lawyer working with EDF.
This fight will likely make its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps as soon as next year. In the meantime, more suits are sure to join these two: “It’s open season for 60 days,” says Pettit. Governor Gavin Newsom has already vowed to challenge the action.
For Pettit, this gets personal: “They’re trying to hurt the kind of future that my grandkids are going to grow up in,” Pettit says. He tells them, “I’m doing the best I can.”
