We're glad you've joined Denison Forum's daily article podcast for Friday, August 1st, 2025,

written by our senior editor for theology, Dr. Ryan Dennison, and narrated by yours truly, Chris Elkins.

Lee Zeldon, the EPA Environmental Protection Agency, administrator, announced earlier this week

what he described as the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.

The new ruling argues that Congress has not given the EPA the necessary authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, methane from oil

and gas companies, or a host of other pollutants. The shift stands in contrast to how the EPA

has approached these issues since the Clean Air Act ostensibly established a legal basis for such

regulation back in 2009. However, the basis for that law was the,

quote-unquote, endangerment finding, which argued that greenhouse gases represent a sufficiently

large threat to public health and welfare to necessitate government intervention.

Zeldon and his team are questioning that conclusion.

Given the way government agencies typically function,

it may seem odd for one to actively try to limit the scope of its authority.

However, shortly after his nomination to lead the EPA,

Zeldon stated that his goal was to drive a dagger through

the heart of climate change religion by going after regulations used to support it.

But this is hardly the first time that conservatives, or even President Trump, have sought to chip

away at these protocols. During his first term, Trump undid many of the regulations from

Obama's tenure in the Oval Office, only to see them reinstated by Biden. However, if the

endangerment findings are overturned, then it would be far more difficult for future presidents

to do the same. And while Zeldon and others in the administration

have argued the cost of these regulations outpaces the environmental gains, their primary focus

...