President Trump is on the brink of ordering a massive policy shakeup — “the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” says Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin.

When Trump’s EPA orders the end of a 2009 finding that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are a threat to public health, it will halt 16 years of federal efforts to mandate vast changes in American life without legal justification.

The so-called Endangerment Finding led to a host of regulations whose estimated costs exceeded a trillion dollars.

Early in his administration, President Barack Obama tried to get Congress to pass an expansive climate change law.

When the bill stalled, Obama charged ahead with executive action.  

The EPA’s December 2009 Endangerment Finding said greenhouse gases should be regulated under the Clean Air Act.

But that law was never meant for such a purpose: It had passed 40 years earlier, before global warming was even a topic of debate.

The Clean Air Act aimed to control a handful of pollutants that posed an immediate danger to public health — think factory smokestacks or exhaust from auto tailpipes.

Greenhouse........

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