Watchdog Obtains Records on Obama-Era EPA Endangerment Finding Revealing Focus on Politics and Optics

Enactment characterized by artificial deadlines, steamrolled process, and “group hugs” for outside collaborators

Federal watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust responded to the Trump administration’s move to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 endangerment finding. The Obama EPA’s decision allowed the federal bureaucracy to seize the power to regulate greenhouse gases, including carbon – a basic element of all life on Earth – under the Clean Air Act.

PPT recently received records of communications from EPA officials at the time the agency was attempting to rush the decision through. The conversations, occurring in the very early days of the Obama administration, reveal officials seemingly more concerned with politics, optics, and power than science.

The sprint to make the announcement by that year’s Earth Day was characterized by the statement, “the Green Group meeting should be cause for a group hug” after an outside activist organization told one of the officials it was taking an action that would help grease the skids for the agency’s rushed decision.

“The endangerment finding was an unprecedented power grab from the start when the Obama EPA rushed it through to achieve a bureaucratic coup regardless of the data, facts, or traditional process,” said PPT Director Michael Chamberlain. “We recently obtained records that show EPA leadership under the Obama administration set artificial deadlines, attempted to steamroll procedural niceties, and coordinated with outside activist organizations.

“For such a monumental decision that gave the federal government virtually unprecedented power to intrude on the lives of its citizens, it’s apparent these officials acted with a pre-determined motive before all the data had been considered. Power and politics were placed firmly ahead of the science.”

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