By Olivia Miller, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy

The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy has joined a national lawsuit challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding, a key legal basis for federal action on greenhouse gas pollution. Earthjustice filed the case on behalf of WVHC and a coalition of environmental groups and Alaska Native tribes from across the country.

The endangerment finding may sound technical, but its purpose is straightforward. It is EPA’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. As Perry Bryant explained in a recent Highlands Voice article, that finding laid the foundation for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act after the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.

In February, the Trump EPA rescinded that finding. The agency dropped the scientific grounding that supported the original finding and instead leaned on economic and legal arguments to justify the rollback.

For West Virginia, this issue hits close to home, as the state has faced repeated flooding, strained water systems, and an already vulnerable power grid under growing stress from climate impacts.

The rollback is especially troubling here because West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey publicly supported EPA’s move. EPA quoted McCuskey praising the repeal and saying he was “proud to work with Administrator Zeldin” on removing the mandate. McCuskey helped lead the effort from Republican attorneys general to support the rollback.

This repeal ignores settled science and weakens one of the federal government’s most important tools for addressing greenhouse gas pollution. If allowed to stand, it would undermine protections meant to safeguard public health and leave communities like ours more vulnerable.

At its core, this case is about whether EPA can walk away from its responsibility to protect people from the harms of climate pollution. WVHC is joining this fight to help make sure it cannot.