On December 7, 2009—“a day that will live in infamy”—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued what is known as the “CO2 endangerment finding,” which has been the linchpin of practically all federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide.

Over the past 15 years, the EPA, other federal agencies, and various states have issued regulations restricting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources, all rooted in the “endangerment finding.” The regulations have cost Americans hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars in higher energy prices and subsidies to alternative energy sources.

But the endangerment finding’s reign may be about to end.

On Wednesday, February 26, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin privately communicated to President Donald Trump a call for the endangerment finding to be rewritten. Zeldin’s action rests on an executive order President Trump issued on his first day in office that required the EPA to reassess “the legality and continued applicability” of the endangerment finding.

The Cornwall Alliance has argued repeatedly the endangerment finding should simply be scrapped. It rests on exaggerated fears of exaggerated harms from exaggerated global warming driven by greenhouse gases. Now our efforts are paying off at last.

In reality, carbon dioxide’s contribution to warming is slight to moderate, and, as we’ve argued in our book Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism, the benefits of the energy derived from carbon dioxide sources, and the direct benefits of carbon dioxide to plant growth, including food crops, far outweigh the harms from global warming.

Mainstream environmental organizations are already expressing dismay at this development, and it will require firm determination on the part of the President and Administrator Zeldin. But now, for the first time in fifteen years, there’s hope that this finding, fatally flawed from the start and from which untold harm to the American economy and especially to America’s poor and low-income people, will finally be set aside. That will be a day to celebrate!