February 12, 2026
Catholic Climate Covenant and Laudato Si’ Movement are deeply alarmed and disappointed by today’s decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding.
This action abandons one of the most important public health safeguards in modern environmental law. Grounded in a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, the Endangerment Finding recognized that greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are pollutants when they harm human health and future generations. For more than fifteen years, it has provided the scientific and legal foundation for limiting pollution from vehicles, power plants, and industry.
Rescinding it places our country and our planet on a dangerous path.
Scientists have warned for decades that the burning of fossil fuels and the unchecked release of greenhouse gases would warm the planet and destabilize the climate. We are now living with the consequences: intensifying storms, prolonged droughts, crop failures, ecosystem collapse, rising health risks, and mounting economic losses. Even with the Endangerment Finding in place, we have not reduced emissions quickly enough to avoid worsening harm. Removing it signals retreat at precisely the moment when stronger action is needed.
The practical consequences of today’s decision are far-reaching. Without the Endangerment Finding, the federal government will no longer have a clear mandate to enforce limits on car and small truck emissions, curb industrial pollution, or sustain progress made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions over recent decades. This will increase pollution, heighten uncertainty, and expose current and future generations to even greater risk.
While it is always appropriate to review and refine regulations, eliminating this foundational finding is not refinement — it is dismantlement.
“This action is akin to eliminating stop lights because you don’t like the color red,” Catholic Climate Covenant Founder and Executive Director, Dan Misleh, told Kate Scanlon of OSV News. “…One can only imagine God reaching for the antacids as we ignore both scientific warnings and moral responsibility.”
The inconvenience of regulation cannot justify the chaos and harm that follow its removal. For Catholics and all people of faith, this is not primarily a political issue. It is a moral one.
We are called to be co-creators with God and to cherish and protect the gift of creation. Catholic Social Teaching makes clear that care for our common home and solidarity with the poor, vulnerable, and marginalized are central to our faith. Those who have contributed least to climate change — low-income communities, future generations, vulnerable nations — will suffer the most from today’s decision.
The Covenant and Laudato Si’ Movement have worked to preserve the Endangerment Finding since last September, when over a dozen multi-faith organizations worked together to collect nearly 10,000 comments from various religious congregations across the country, asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to rescind the Endangerment Finding.
The organizations, including Catholic Climate Covenant, Franciscan Action Network, Dayenu: A Jewish Call to Climate Action, Laudato Si’ Movement – North America, NETWORK, the Sisters of Mercy, Ignatian Solidarity Movement, National Religious Partnership for the Environment, Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns, as well as thousands of Black church leaders, worked with their supporters to collect comments delivered to the EPA on Sept. 17.
The role of government is to advance the common good, not to privilege the wealthy and well-connected. Rescinding the Endangerment Finding moves us further from that responsibility.
St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis, and now Pope Leo XIV, along with the U.S. Catholic bishops, have consistently urged bold action to confront climate change. In his apostolic exhortation Laudate Deum, Pope Francis asked a haunting question: “What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power, only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?”
When we know what is required to reduce the risks of climate change and choose not to act, we fail in our duty as stewards of God’s creation. Catholic Climate Covenant and Laudato Si’ Movement call on Congress, state leaders, and people of goodwill across the nation to redouble their commitment to climate solutions that protect human health, safeguard creation, and defend the most vulnerable.
Today’s decision is more than a setback — it is unconscionable. The Endangerment Finding should have stood. But our moral obligation to care for our common home remains unchanged.
