Speaker at Environment and Public Works hearing says Trump administration is trying to undo carbon dioxide pollutant finding

At a hearing of the Environment and Public Works Committee, an unidentified speaker said that regulators long ago concluded carbon dioxide from fossil fuels should be treated as a pollutant and that the Supreme Court has required and effectively upheld that determination.

"Years ago, expert regulators determined that the dangers from fossil fuel emissions, carbon dioxide specifically, were serious enough to justify counting it as a pollutant," the unidentified speaker said, adding that the finding "has been upheld ever since and increasingly validated by the evidence of intervening years." The speaker cited the Supreme Court as the legal foundation for that regulatory approach.

The speaker alleged that the Trump administration was attempting to undo that finding to benefit the fossil fuel industry, characterizing the effort as politically driven by wealthy industry donors. "This is just more fossil fuel corruption creeping into our government," the speaker said.

The speaker also emphasized that regulatory decisions rest on "facts and reasonableness" and said advocates would use the rulemaking or administrative process to demonstrate that proposed rollbacks were not supported by evidence.

The transcript excerpt does not identify the speaker by name or title and does not record any formal motions, votes, or responses from other committee members in this excerpt. No specific rule changes, proposed orders, court citations, or dates for next steps were specified in the provided text.