EPA "Endangerment Finding" Comment Period
Catholic Community to submit 5000 comments to EPA.
Please Take Action by September 1, 2025!
Testimonials
Read or watch video testimonials from Franciscan climate activists.
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Urgent action is needed by September 1.
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Learn more about the EPA’s Endangerment Finding!
FAN and the U.S. Catholic Community hope to submit 5000 signatures on a joint “comment” to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, by September 1, 2025.
Please add your signature to the online petition— to urge the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to do what is right: do not repeal the Endangerment Finding and deny the health impacts of climate pollution.
What’s happening?
On July 29, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to rescind the landmark “endangerment finding,” which recognizes that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health and allows the government to regulate gas emissions. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin calls the proposal the “largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” The 300-page proposal questions the scientific consensus on climate change, including reports from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is widely considered the gold standard for climate science.
What’s the endangerment finding?
The endangerment finding has been at the center of the political fight over climate change since 2007, when the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Two years later, in 2009, the EPA issued the endangerment finding. Soon after, the EPA set carbon limits for vehicles and power plants.
Elimination of the endangerment finding would do away with the key hurdle to implementing the administration’s energy agenda in one full swoop as opposed to having to weaken regulations one by one.
If the rule takes effect, a long legal battle would likely ensue during which time companies could produce high-polluting cars having long-term impact. Longer-term, the repeal of the Endangerment Finding would dismantle the legal basis and duty for the government to regulate greenhouse gases from vehicles and power plants.
What’s next?
The EPA’s announcement of the proposed repeal of the endangerment finding initiated a 45-day EPA comment period, in which FAN will participate. A final rule is expected before the end of the year. Urgent action is needed now during the EPA’s 45-day comment period. FAN and Catholic partners hope to submit 5000+ signatures on a joint “comment” to the EPA by September 1, 2025!
Additional Resources!
Follow the Washington Post’s emerging coverage and analysis.
More on the Endangerment Finding from Inside Climate News.
Pollution impacts of this repeal from the Environmental Defense Fund.
EPA comment process and public hearings from Regulations.gov here.
Catholic Climate Covenant Executive Director Dan Misleh testifies to EPA, here.
Toolkit and Messaging Guidance for Faith Communities from the National Parnership on the Environment, here.
“The climate crisis is a spiritual crisis.”
– Sr. Joan Brown, OSF
Sr Joan Brown is a Sister of St. Francis in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Sr. Joan is the recently retired director and also the co-founder of New Mexico and El Paso Interfaith Power & Light. Sr Joan has worked for decades on environmental concerns in the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas— the largest oil and gas producing region in the United States and the world. Sr. Joan reminds us: We need rules to address pollution, including methane, in the oil and gas communities.”
“Rescinding the Endangerment Finding
would set the stage for irreversible harm
to God’s creation.”
– Br. Jacek Orzechowski O.F.M.
Bro. Jacek O.F.M. is the Associate Director of the Laudato Si’ Center for Integral Ecology at Siena University. On Siena’s campus, the Center enhances spiritual and ethical awareness, academic enrichment, climate justice, and responsible sustainable practices. The Center is also aims to build a national and global network among Franciscan institutions of higher education to create opportunities for advancing the goals outlined in Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’.
CO2 in excess will destroy much of the planet. This destruction has already begun.
– Mike Sills-Trausch
Franciscan Renewal Center, Scottsdale AZ
Enable protection of our environment. Have the determination to take action to safeguard everyone’s future.
– Dr. Elaine Martin, OSF
Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia
I live along the NY/PA border and have seen the damage that fossil fuel extraction caused my PA neighbors. As a person of faith, part of my response was to decarbonize our home and most of our transportation, powering our needs with solar power. This administration has a Constitutional responsibility to ‘promote the general welfare.’ Repealing the Endangerment Finding would harm all Americans and the planet that sustains us.
– Joanne Corey
St. Francis of Assisi, Binghamton NY
All people living in the US are harmed by pollution in our air and water. You may think that repealing the Endangerment Finding will better our economy or our society. But it will not. Car manufacturers have already moved forward and engineered cleaner cars. They are not going to spend millions to re-engineer. What you are doing is pandering to high pollution emitters. Please don’t put the profit of a few over the lives of many. My Catholic faith compels me to urge you to leave the Endangerment Finding in place.
– Patricia Sills-Trausch
Franciscan Renewal Center, Scottsdale AZ
We are coming into the Season of Creation. Sept.1-Oct.4, 2025. It is now more important than ever before to start taking care of God’s gift to us, that is, all of creation. Not just animals and plants, but also the atmosphere, the oceans, and ALL of humanity. Treat everyone and everything with the dignity given to them by the One woh made them. Please make this a reality. Thank you, Christina Zurawski, OFS
– Christina Zuawski, OSF
Waterford PA
In rescinding the “endangerment finding,” the US Administration and EPA are saying that greenhouse gas emissions don’t endanger our health and welfare— as our newsfeeds fill up with news of fires, floods, and air quality alerts. The climate can’t wait— and it isn’t.
– Mike Schut
Director, Integral Ecology, Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls
Do the right thing, Mr. Zeldin. Protect the air we all breathe. Think about your daughters, and your daughters’ children, and your daughters’ children’s children.
– Lindsay Nugent
St. Francis Xavier Parish, Missoula, MT