EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin spoke at a Toyota dealership in Huntersville on Friday to announce the rollback of key greenhouse gas regulations.
The 2009 Endangerment Finding identified six greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide and methane — as public health threats and provided the foundation for federal regulators to enforce greenhouse gas emission standards with the auto industry.
Zeldin made the announcement two hours east of Asheville, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024 — an event exacerbated by warmer-than-average ocean temperatures. He said it was no longer his job to regulate planet-warming emissions.
“This was a devastating storm that hit western North Carolina, and it is very important to us at the EPA to help them rebuild,” Zeldin said. “But what I'm not going to do is grant myself new powers that are not authorized in federal statute to take actions that amount to trillions of dollars of new regulation.”
