There could be a resurgence in coal-fired power plants, like the E.W. Brown Generating Station in Harrodsburg, Ky., after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin revoked the agency’s 2009 endangerment finding, the basis for the federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.

On Feb. 12, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it was killing the “endangerment finding,” the foundational legal, scientific and policy determination that enabled landmark climate policies, including stricter vehicle efficiency standards and power plant emissions limits.

First issued in 2009, it required the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases because of the threat they pose to human health. The EPA had concluded that “the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride — in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”

Now, the U.S. no longer has emissions standards. 

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No emission standards at all.

If the EPA’s decision holds up, it could increase the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10% over the next 30 years, according to the Environmental Defense Fund.

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What’s next? Coal-fired cars?

Climate denialism isn’t new, but the blatant disregard for scientific evidence of a warming planet has reached previously unseen depths. 

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Perhaps what is most mind-boggling about this decision is the willingness to permanently cede automotive competitiveness to China, which has gone all in on cleaner and fast-charging electric vehicles, producing 12.4 million of them in 2024 — 70% of the global market.

American cars are already too large and fuel-inefficient for foreign markets. And the large, heavy, electric SUVs that U.S. automakers are pushing aren’t selling here, either, which is not difficult to understand given the combination of high price point, insufficient infrastructure and range anxiety. The larger the car, even when electric, the more energy intensive to charge.

Ford announced in December that it would kill several electric-vehicle models and take a $19.5 billion write-down in yet another dramatic example of the auto industry’s retreat from battery-powered models in response to the Trump administration’s policies, which include an end to the federal EV tax credit.

With this deregulation — what Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, called “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States” — American cars are only going to become more impractical.

As trucks and SUVs have gotten larger (and sedans and other smaller models have all but disappeared), the built environment has had to accommodate them. They take up more room on the road, require widened lanes and ever larger parking lots. And the larger cars get, the more dangerous they are to pedestrians. People often say they feel safer in these increasingly bigger and bulkier vehicles, but those drivers rarely, if ever, take into account the safety of those not in the car with them.

Larger SUVs and trucks are 45% more likely to cause fatalities than smaller, lower vehicles. The ever-higher front-end profiles are significantly more lethal, often striking pedestrians in the chest or head (or mowing down small children) rather than hitting them lower and throwing them onto the windshield. Driver visibility is decreased; there are more blind spots that can hide anyone walking in front, especially children. The increased weight of these cars means they take longer to stop and have more energy on impact, increasing the severity of injuries.

The U.S. and, yes, even California, continue to design for the car: highways are widened (even though it’s well established that it does not decrease traffic), more surface parking lots, larger garages (more than 20% of single-family homes built each year since 2013 have three-car garages) and less focus on pedestrian safety and experience.

Deregulating emission standards could increase the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 10% over the next 30 years.

Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged immediate legal action against the endangerment finding repeal, calling it “reckless” and “a betrayal,” and 23 attorneys general from other states, along with numerous cities and counties, have followed suit. And a coalition of groups, including the American Public Health Association, the Environmental Defense Fund, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a lawsuit on Feb. 18, arguing that the EPA’s action was illegal. 

In terms of the state’s response to this and the other deregulatory actions the Trump administration has made, California can and will continue to enforce its own regulations.

At least for now. Republicans are trying to end California’s waiver to set its own emission standards.

While it still maintains its waiver, the state can set independent vehicle standards, mandating that automakers sell increasing percentages of electric vehicles.

The increasing size of American cars is, oddly, the partial result of an Obama-era decision around fuel efficiency: It created a carve-out for SUVs and other “light trucks.” The way the fuel economy rules were designed has been shown to potentially encourage manufacturers to build larger vehicles to avoid lower fuel efficiency standards.

California should overturn that big car-incentivizing rule for its own vehicle fleet. It can — and absolutely should  — tax or increase fees on vehicles based on size and weight, particularly targeting heavier SUVs and trucks. (Assembly Bill 251, passed in 2023, requires a task force to study the relationship between vehicle weight and injuries to vulnerable road users.) The state can also stop funding highway expansion projects, which only induce demand, and redirect those funds to expanding transit and transit infrastructure. 

Guest opinions in Open Forum and Insight are produced by writers with expertise, personal experience or original insights on a subject of interest to our readers. Their views do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Chronicle editorial board, which is committed to providing a diversity of ideas to our readership.

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The negative externalities of cars are bad enough; this latest action by the EPA will — as 350.org Executive Director Anne Jellema, said in a statement — will make it all the more apparent “that ordinary people in the U.S. and around the world are paying the real price for Big Oil’s profits: lives are being lost, homes are being destroyed and costs are soaring.” 

And I’m only half-joking about the coal-powered car; it was only last month that U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum introduced “Coalie,”  a mascot promoting increased use of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.

Allison Arieff is a columnist and editorial writer for the Opinion section.

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