Coleman, other GOP AGs, back Trump on greenhouse gas emissions

Republican Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman and GOP attorneys general from 25 other states are supporting a Trump administration move to rescind a finding that underpins the federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.

The attorneys general submitted the letter, led by Coleman and West Virginia Attorney General John “JB” McCuskey, Monday to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The letter supports the Trump EPA’s proposal to reverse the agency’s previous finding that greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide threaten “both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

The 2009 “endangerment” finding established under the Obama administration has served as the legal basis for a number of federal regulations seeking to curb greenhouse gas emissions, including a 2024 Biden administration rule that restricted tailpipe emissions from vehicles. The finding followed a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision that found the agency could regulate greenhouse gases as an air pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Coleman in a statement provided through a press release Tuesday highlighting the 88-page letter said the “unlawful” EPA finding “has been the justification for assaults on Kentucky.”

“Along with AGs across the country, we’re partnering with President Trump to preserve affordable and reliable energy in Kentucky and to stop the madness that has hiked prices and killed jobs,” Coleman said.

The press release from Coleman’s office also stated the EPA finding has underpinned “some of the worst policies of the last decades,” citing the Clean Power Plan that aims to curs carbon emissions from existing power plants and federal electric vehicle “mandates.”

The letter questions the near unanimous scientific consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide from human activities, such as burning fossil fuels, are driving the warming of the Earth’s climate.

“[C]limate science didn’t support the Endangerment Finding in 2009, and the science has only gotten worse for EPA’s original finding since then,” the attorneys general wrote in the letter’s introduction.

The letter claims increasing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would “have only a trivial effect on global temperature,” citing physicists Steven Koonin, Richard Lindzin and William Happer who have questioned climate science and the threat of climate change.

Vic Maddox, counsel on special litigation for Kentucky’s attorney general, cited Lindzin and Happer last year in testimony to state lawmakers that carbon dioxide’s role in climate change was disputed.

The letter is co-signed by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, in a 2021 report stated humans’ role in climate change was “unequivocal” and connected climate change to an increasing frequency of heatwaves, droughts, heavy rainfall events, stronger hurricanes and other extreme weather.

A number of environmental and health advocacy groups are urging the EPA to keep the endangerment finding. The American Lung Association and other health organizations wrote that people’s health would suffer if “life-saving pollution controls are left on the manufacturing floor and the overwhelming scientific consensus — and the law — on climate change is ignored.”

Byron Gary, an attorney for the environmental legal group Kentucky Resources Council, told the Lantern he had not reviewed the letter from the attorneys general. But he said a reversal of the endangerment finding by the EPA would lead to relying further on “aging fossil infrastructure” that would increase energy costs, reduce energy reliability and exacerbate climate change.

Gary pointed to an article published this month in the British weekly scientific journal Nature that found the health impacts of smoke from increased wildfires driven by climate change could lead to tens of thousands of increased deaths.

“These are real effects on people’s lives. They are going to be killing people if this is repealed,” Gary said.