The Proof is in: Endangerment Discovering was Pre-cooked – Authorities Accountability & Oversight
https://govoversight.org/the-evidence-is-in-endangerment-finding-was-pre-cooked/
February 9, 2026
Climate Regs, Endangerment
2009 Obama EPA appointees internally called the Endangerment Finding a “decision ready to go,” a “basic fact” and “nothing more than science and common sense”; discussion went straight to timing, suggesting predetermination and a sham notice-and-comment rule making process
Executive Summary: GAO strongly encourages the Environmental Protection Agency to include in any rescission of the Obama Administration’s 2009 Endangerment Finding (EF) the reality, documented below, that it was the product of unalterably closed minds and thereby unlawful. Agency Emails dated as early as two weeks after the January 21, 2009, inauguration, and at least one memorandum, reveal that the political appointees who orchestrated the April 17, 2009 proposal did not in fact deliberate over whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare. Correspondence shows the decision makers calling “endangerment” a “decision ready to go,” a “basic fact” and “nothing more than science and common sense.” Discussions were about the timing of going through various individual motions required to impose a significant notice-and-comment rulemaking, and how to credibly pull that off on a rushed timetable dictated by political anniversaries and a scheduled UN conference in Copenhagen. The EF was the product of a sham regulatory process and violated the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, and D.C. Circuit precedent. At minimum, any court seeing this evidence should remand the EF to a Special Master for discovery into the Agency’s state of mind and the propriety of the EF which the Agency seeks to rescind.
GAO is reading about increasing concerns over which arguments the Environmental Protection Agency will deploy in rescinding the 2009 Endangerment Finding (“EF”). The EF is the keystone in the global warming edifice, having precipitated numerous Agency regulations, whether purportedly made necessary due to the EF or simply grounded therein and ‘incorporated by reference.'[1]
Supporting that regulatory assault was the purpose behind what records subsequently released by the Agency reveal was a “ready to go” finding of endangerment brought to the Agency by political appointees in the then-new Obama administration.
The courts have subsequently struck down Agency claims of vast regulatory powers to implement at least one regulation triggered by the EF, the 2015 “Clean Power Plan.”[2] The Agency now properly seeks to rescind the Endangerment Finding itself.
A Job for SCOTUS
One concern expressed by opponents of the EF is the weight EPA is placing on the argument that the only interpretation of the relevant statutory language is that the Agency does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act (rather than, say, it has the authority but there is no endangerment from motor vehicle emissions). This scripts a frontal challenge for the Supreme Court to overturn its 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA opinion holding that the Agency does have this authority. This not only assures that the D.C. Circuit will be mere way station on the path to SCOTUS review, as the circuit court, however resistant it might on occasion be to getting SCOTUS’s messages, surely will have no problem applying Mass. v. EPA here and ruling against EPA at least on that lead argument.
One problem the Agency will face is that Justice Stevens’ tendentious 5-4 opinion (remember when those were illegitimate? Selected, not elected, etc.?) included assertions that “There is no reason, much less a compelling reason, to accept EPA’s invitation to read ambiguity into a clear statute,” and “Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Clean Air Act’s capacious definition of “air pollutant,” we hold that EPA has the statutory authority to regulate the emission of such gases from new motor vehicles.” However unsupportable (as the Scalia dissent makes clear), this contemplation of the question facing all such adventurism under West Virginia v. EPA[3] means Mass. v. EPA will have to be ripped out by the roots, as the Court recently did with another Stevens creation, the 1984 Chevron v. NRDC (which opinion seemingly precluded his outcome in Mass. v. EPA). Tackling this error now is preferable to decades of creating exceptions and other avenues to avoid admitting mistakes were made, which was the path the Court chose in Chevron almost as soon as it released the opinion. Already, the Court seems to have quietly walked away from one of two Mass. v. EPA holdings, that of a “special solicitude” on states’ standing to sue. That threshold finding made the entire mess possible and yet, about this, the Court now appears to be saying never mind.
Pour it On, Salt the Earth
There is no reason to not throw everything at rescinding the EF. This applies to arguments including that that the Obama EPA’s predetermination shows the corruption of the administrative record in developing the EF. Establishing how flawed the process was would salt the earth for any activist administration in the future seeking to revive the GHG-endangerment finding (assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t shut the entire project down as beyond the scope of EPA’s authority, but somehow leaves open the possibility of such future action).
GAO points to noted “law whisperer” “Joe Goffman, the air chief under former President Joe Biden, sa[ying the Trump] EPA would likely lean into arguments that it thinks could persuade the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court to issue a decision that “precludes or dispositively sandbags a future administration from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.” Predetermination is one of those arguments.
In fact, the most fervent EF supporters have unwittingly—and with breathtaking lack of self-awareness—agreed that predetermination is disqualifying.
As such, GAO strongly encourages the Agency to include in its formal rescission an acknowledgement, with the documentary evidence some of which only EPA possesses, that the EF was the product of unalterably closed minds. Agency Emails dated as early as two weeks after the January 21, 2009, inauguration, and at least one memorandum, reveal that the political appointees who orchestrated the April 2009 proposal and December 2009 final rule formalizing the EF did not deliberate over whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare. Instead, they asserted in correspondence that endangerment was a “decision ready to go,” a “basic fact” and “nothing more than science and common sense.” Discussions were limited to scripting the timing of going through various individual motions required to impose a significant notice-and-comment rulemaking, and how could they credibly pull that off on a timetable these appointees had concluded should be dictated by political anniversaries and a scheduled international conference.[4]
The below Agency records now in the public domain confirm there was no realistic chance the Obama-era process, or these motions, would achieve any other outcome.
EPA conducted a truncated and sham internal and inter-agency review process and similarly engineered a notice-and-comment public participation process effectively rendered meaningless, not genuinely open to rational consideration of arguments and evidence presented to the Agency, and thereby not executed in a way that allowed it to have a meaningful impact on the final decision. The officials should have recused or been recused.
This leaves the Endangerment Finding in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) as arbitrary and capricious and warrants a court to uphold the Agency’s rescission of the EF for being in violation of the APA and the Due Process Clause, or at minimum remand it to a Special Master for discovery into the Agency’s state of mind and propriety of the Endangerment Finding which the Agency seeks to rescind. Telecomms. Research & Action Ctr. v. FCC, 242 U.S. App. D.C. 222, 750 F.2d 70, 78 (1984) (“if an agency record is insufficient, the Court of Appeals may either remand the record to the agency for further development or appoint a special master under 28 U.S.C. § 2347(b)(3).”).
A. The EF Was Unlawfully Predetermined and the Product of Unalterably Closed Minds
The Unalterably Closed Mind Standard
The Due Process Clause to the U.S. Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the D.C. Circuit’s precedent require that decisionmakers meaningfully consider the evidence and arguments presented during a proceeding. This is the hallmark of Constitutional due process and a fair and open administrative process. Officials who proceed with predetermination, without being genuinely open to reconsideration of facts and policy, violate the public’s rights.
Although the presumption of regularity generally protects agency decisionmakers unless there is strong evidence of bad faith or improper behavior, Nat’l Lifeline Ass’n v. FCC, 921 F.3d 1102, Hercules, Inc. v. EPA, 598 F.2d 91, the APA provides mechanisms for judicial review of agency actions that are arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law. The D.C. Circuit Court has held that decisionmakers violate the Due Process Clause and must be disqualified when they act with an “unalterably closed mind” and are “unwilling or unable” to rationally consider arguments contrary to their pre-existing position. Ass’n of Nat’l Advertisers, Inc. v. FTC, 627 F.2d 1151, 1170, 1174 (D.C. Cir. 1979). Courts may set aside agency decisions made with an “unalterably closed mind” just as they may if the agency failed to consider relevant factors or relies on improper considerations.
The “unalterably closed mind” test balances the need for impartiality with the recognition that agency officials often have policy views or preconceptions due to their roles in implementing statutory programs. An unalterably closed mind is demonstrated, the presumption of administrative regularity is rebutted, and remedy is warranted when there is a “clear and convincing showing” that an agency member’s unwillingness or inability to fairly consider views on matters critical to the disposition of a proceeding other than their pre-existing policy views, beliefs, and political agendas. Association of Nat’l Advertisers, Inc. v. FTC.
Instances of officials announcing their considered position early in a process, then carrying out a legitimate process does not satisfy the test. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc. v. FTC, 801 F.2d 417, 427 (D.C. Cir. 1986). Agency records show that the rather the opposite to have been the case with the Endangerment Finding: while the agency publicly insisted it had not decided to make a finding of “endangerment,” it had, and the only outstanding matter under consideration was the staging of the performance, to ensure and pre-arrange an expedited internal review process revolving around dates and events of political significance to the appointees, rendering the supposed notice-and-comment process as a sham. The documentary record suggesting bad faith is overwhelming, and sufficient to overcome a presumption of good faith, or regularity.
EPA should cite to and document both reasons in rescinding the Endangerment Finding.
2. Records establish a clear appearance that EPA’s Endangerment Finding was unlawfully predetermined.
The possibility of predetermination in the 2009 regulatory “finding” that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare was first raised by emails and logs produced in a 2012 FOIA lawsuit over then-Administrator Lisa Jackson’s unlawful, false-identity email account purporting to belong to a “Richard Windsor.”[5] Subsequent release of some of those records which had been withheld in part or in full, including portions we now know were improperly withheld as “deliberative,” strongly support a conclusion that the Agency making its Endangerment Finding was predetermined by political appointees well before the declared, formal notice-and-comment process could plausibly have yielded any reasoned decision. Internal deliberations were all along simply a matter of presentation including but not limited to the matter of timing the announcement for optimal political orchestration. That is, these records provide a sound and documentary basis for concluding that there was no realistic chance the notice-and-comment process would achieve any other outcome.
Prior advocacy, pre-existing policy views, beliefs, and political agendas among the principals surely were present in this instance, with Lisa Heinzerling, “ the lead author of the briefs of Massachusetts and other petitioners in Massachusetts v. EPA,” brought in to serve as Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, or “policy chief”[6] ‑—a position that did not require Senate confirmation. In that capacity, as these records confirm, Ms. Heinzerling drove the formalization and adoption of the position she had advocated for years. That is not delegitimatizing under D.C. Circuit precedent. The records, however, further establish in a clear and convincing way that Ms. Heinzerling’s zeal to impose the standard she had previously fought for as private counsel was never set aside to consider other viewpoints, was shared by other relevant appointees, and guided a predetermined outcome. These records conclusively rule out the prospect that at any time prior to its April 2009 proposal was the issue of whether to publish the Endangerment Finding in question or the subject of debate; the questions that run through all of these records are political timing and optics, including how quickly the Agency could publish the Finding given the requirement of an interagency review process (which other political appointees promised to expedite to days rather than months so as to satisfy the desire to publish the Endangerment Finding by one of two politically symbolic target dates in April). These records not only strongly suggest these appointees behind the Finding were incapable of considering the issue with an open mind, but they also leave no question that the purported deliberation, reviews and notice-and-comment processes were shams, with the outcome predetermined and even verbally assured in advance to allies. Public comments were not going to influence the final decision, and indeed the process did not involve fairly assessing comment.
Exemplar Correspondence Evincing Predetermination
On January 21, 2009, the Obama administration officially assumed office at noon. Approximately two weeks after the inauguration, on February 8, 2009, Lisa Heinzerling sends Lisa Jackson a “power plant memo” stating, in pertinent part (bold added):
“To: Lisa Jackson
From: Lisa Heinzerling
Date: February 8, 2009
Re: EPA Activities Relevant to Power Plants
Our “power plants” conference call with Carol Browner and her team is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 10:00. In preparation for that call, I have put together the following description of recent and near-term EPA activities related to power plants: …
Endangerment: We expect to be able to issue a proposed finding of endangerment for greenhouse gases within the next 100 days. Within the same document, we expect to find that certain major categories of greenhouse gases – in particular, motor vehicles – cause or contribute to air pollution (GHG emissions) which endangers public health and welfare. An endangerment finding combined with a causal finding will trigger regulatory obligations under the Clean Air Act.”[7]
Approximately three weeks into the administration, on February 16, 2009, Administrator Jackson/“Richard Windsor” writes to Heinzerling, Subject: Good news re: Johnson memo[8]:
“The Sierra Club and other petitioners who have challenged the Johnson memo on PSD will NOT be asking the court to stay the memo tomorrow. So we should all be celebrating together tomorrow, and the Green Group meeting should be cause for a group hug. Have a good night.”[9]
Heinzerling responds that same day, “Wow. How did you pull THAT off?”[10] GAO suggests that this reflects that the Administrator assuaged environmentalist pressure groups from forcing the issue via litigation in the D.C. Circuit rather than on the appointees’ own terms, by informing the activists that the Endangerment Finding would be made.
On February 22, 2009, a mere four weeks into office, Ms. Heinzerling again references the matter of timing or when the Agency should issue the finding of “endangerment,” the near-term fact of which is already assumed. Her email to Ms. Jackson stated in pertinent part:
“Hi Lisa – Two questions on endangerment: … 2) What date should we shoot for for our own proposed endangerment finding? A number of press outlets have surmised, based on your excellent NYT interview [published February 18, 2009], that the finding will be issued April 2, the Mass v EPA anniversary. You have also saif [sic] the first day of Earth Week would be good. Which do you prefer? Dina Kruger says her team can do April 2 IF the OMB review process goes quickly.”[11]
Jackson responds in pertinent part, “2) I would like to shoot for an April 16th event at EPA that features POTUS” (President of the United States).[12]
On March 14, 2009, less than two months into the administration, Heinzerling emailed Jackson and Associate Administrator McIntosh about a memorandum she drafted for Jackson to send to the President, in pertinent part (bold added), “We have a politically fraught but scientifically and legally straightforward decision ready to go: that is, that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and that mobile sources contribute to the pollution that is dangerous.”[13]
That the EF was “ready to go” is conclusive of predetermination.
On March 15, 2009, Heinzerling emailed Jackson, indicating these officials’ own predetermination and concern that it might not be approved if others in the administration were given the chance to intervene, stating, in pertinent part:
“I’ve worried that perhaps if we “lose” on the [POTUS] memo, we lose not only on the possibility of a Presidential announcement but also, because of the way the memo is written, on the timing and perhaps content of the finding itself.”[14]
This memo as edited includes the following pertinent points (bold added, truncated for space considerations):
MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT
FROM: LISA P. JACKSON
SUBJECT: POTENTIAL PRESIDENTIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OF EPA’S
“ENDANGERMENT FINDING” ON GREENHOUSE GASES
I am writing to ask you to give your most serious consideration to the idea of personally announcing the Environmental Protection Agency’s impending determination that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. Climate change is the most pressing environmental issue of our time, and the “endangerment finding” soon to be issued by EPA will be the United States Government’s first official recognition of this threat. I would urge that this announcement be the major Presidential event of this year’s Earth Week. …
A draft endangerment finding will be sent to OMB [Office of Management and Budget] for interagency review on March 20. OMB has indicated that they will endeavor to complete the process of interagency review in three weeks, so that the endangerment finding would be ready to be issued in mid-April….
Analysis and Policy Considerations
You have made climate policy a central part of your domestic and international agenda. The premise of this policy is that greenhouse gases do indeed threaten human well-being. Yet the United States Government has never officially and formally proclaimed this basic fact… I believe that when the Government does so, through the endangerment finding EPA soon will make, you should be the one to deliver this long-awaited message.
If Earth Day passed without a finding, the domestic and foreign criticism would begin immediately and mount steadily. When, eventually, your Administration made the finding – something that, I will be so bold to say, is a near-certainty ….[T]he beauty of making the endangerment finding during Earth Week is that it would elate the Left without offering targets of opportunity to the Right. After all, the finding is comprised of nothing more than science and common sense.”[15]
On March 16, 2009, EPA National Center for Environmental Economics (NCEE) senior scientist Dr. Alan Carlin, whose complaints about a hurried and non-rigorous review process and lack of supporting data were soon made public,[16] pressed for a more thorough consideration, contradicting what the administration has decided to do.[17] The next day, March 17, 2009, NCEE director Al McGartland emailed Carlin, stating that he did not forward Carlin’s input and, inter alia, “The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision.”[18]
A truism, as noted in a June 8, 2009 memo to prepare Administrator Jackson for her upcoming meeting with Democratic Senators, is that, “if EPA were ever to give the impression that its ongoing greenhouse-gas regulatory activity were motivated by anything other than a desire to apply today’s best science to today’s statutory law, then it would de-legitimize EPA’s actions in the eyes of many stakeholders and members of the public.”[19]
The EPA’s proposed rule properly rescinds the Agency’s earlier action which was predetermined and thus procedurally flawed. When the Agency issues the Rule in final form, it should detail and document this additional evidence of unlawfulness, boosting its chances of surviving legal challenge and salting the earth for a future administration that would want to build on the corrupted administrative record to reinstate a finding of endangerment.
[1] “Previous administrations used the Endangerment Finding to regulate emissions from automobiles, aircraft, agriculture equipment, power plants, and fossil fuel producers in order to drive partisan, left-wing policy goals such as electric vehicle mandates.” Sept. 3, 2025 letter, House Committee and Government Reform to Ms. Marcia McNutt, President, National Academy of Sciences, https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/National-Academies-of-Sciences-President-McNutt-re-Endangerment-Finding-Letter-09032025.pdf. Several rules flowing from the EF were imposed as a “suite of standards” all designed to force the premature retirement of coal and gas-fired electricity generation. Press release, “Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Suite of Standards to Reduce Pollution from Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, April 25, 2024, https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-finalizes-suite-standards-reduce-pollution-fossil-fuel. The unlawful campaign of using a cascade of rules to force “expedited retirement” of power plants was admitted to by then-Agency Administrator Michael Regan in 2022, affirming that the Endangerment Finding itself represents unlawful agency adventurism, claiming authority far beyond that which Congress actually delegated. See, e.g., Jean Chemnick and Mike Lee, “What the EPA’s New Plans for Regulating Power Plants Mean for Carbon,” Scientific American, March 11, 2023, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-epas-new-plans-for-regulating-power-plants-mean-for-carbon/ (“The industry gets to take a look at this suite of rules all at once and say, ‘Is it worth doubling down on investments in this current facility or operation, or should we look at the cost and say no, it’s time to pivot and invest in a clean energy future?” Regan told reporters after his keynote address. “If some of these facilities decide that it’s not worth investing in [control technologies] and you get an expedited retirement, that’s the best tool for reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” he added.”). See also, “Administrator Michael Regan, Remarks to CERAWeek About EPA’s Approach to Deliver Certainty for Power Sector and Ensure Significant Public Health Benefits, As Prepared for Delivery,” https://web.archive.org/web/20220503220839/https://www.epa.gov/speeches/administrator-michael-regan-remarks-ceraweek-about-epas-approach-deliver-certainty-power.
[2] West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697 (2022). A decade of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence, including also Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U.S. 302 (2014), Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743 (2015), and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. 369 (2024) is highly relevant to assessing the EF as well as all rules necessarily flowing therefrom. Those opinions clarify the scope of the EPA’s authority, admonish against regulating in complete disregard of cost (particularly Cf. benefit), affirm that deciding how Americans get their electricity (i.e., seeking to force “generation shifting”) is not within EPA’s mission, and/or restate the basic principle that major policy determinations are the prerogative of Congress and not administrative agencies.
[3] Did Congress speak clearly to the issue? If not, it is up to the courts to decide whether an agency was granted this authority.
[4] Concerns were not exclusively limited to optics. Senior Agency officials behind the Finding also struggled with the risk that their desire to include the President of the United States in an event proposing the Finding could upset “the timing and perhaps content of the finding itself”—which Finding the then-Administrator wrote to the White House, knowingly, was “something that, I will be so bold to say, is a near-certainty.”
[5] Competitive Enterprise Institute v. EPA (DDC), Case No. 1:12-cv-01617 (JEB), the litigation over then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s false-identity email account in the name of Richard Windsor (see, e.g., Neela Banerjee, “EPA administrator’s email account raises concern,” Los Angeles Times, Nov. 12, 2012, https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2012-nov-20-la-na-epa-emails-20121121-story.html) which, due to the volume of more than 100,000 records involved, led the Court to reviewing a randomly selected (by EPA) index of responsive records. All emails to or from Administrator Lisa Jackson cited hereafter are to or from her false-identity email account in the name of “Richard Windsor,” and the Agency has long publicly admitted that Jackson is the author/recipient of emails on that address. See, e.g., Senate Environment and Public Works Comm., Minority Report, “A Call for Sunshine: EPA’s FOIA and Federal Records Failures Uncovered,” (Sept. 9, 2013) at 9, https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/5/0/5091690a-1c27-4e07-98aa-e4074a117dab/BF9D594B66EBA773D15F23EC2FEC547786CB6ADB4C2DD1862C0C90B6D44D8B5A.callforsunshineinepasfoiaandfederalrecordsfailuresuncovered.pdf.
[6] Ms. Heinzerling, who authored Massachusetts et al.’s brief in the Massachusetts v. EPA case, was brought in to the administration immediately and set to work on this matter for the first approximately seven months as “Administrator Jackson’s chief advisor on climate matters” (apparently until “reinforcements have arrived” (Feb. 10, 2009 email from Lisa Heinzerling to Eric Wachter, et al., Subject: pending items), https://archive.epa.gov/publicinvolvement/web/html/epaappointmentactivities.html. See also Robin Bravender, “EPA policy chief steps down,” Nov. 4, 2010, Politico, https://www.politico.com/story/2010/11/epa-policy-chief-steps-down-044708.
[7] Feb. 8, 2009 Memo Subject: Re: EPA Activities Relevant to Power Plants, To: Lisa Jackson From: Lisa Heinzerling.
[8] On December 18, 2008, then-EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson issued an 18-page memorandum titled “EPA’s Interpretation of Regulations that Determine Pollutants Covered By Federal Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) Permit Program,” detailing EPA’s position on regulating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions under the PSD permitting program. The memo states that EPA does not consider a pollutant to be “subject to regulation.”https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-07/documents/co2_psd.pdf
[9] Feb. 16, 2009 email from Heinzerling to Jackson, Allyn Brooks-LaSure, Subject: Good news re: Johnson memo.
[10] Feb. 16, 2009 email from Jackson to Heinzerling, Subject Re: Good news re: Johnson memo.
[11] Feb. 22, 2009 email from Heinzerling to Jackson, Subject: Endangerment.
[12] Feb. 22, 2009 email from Jackson to Heinzerling, cc: Allyn Brooks-LaSure, Subject: Re: Endangerment. A White House official let slip this predetermination, which was reported the next day in a Dow Jones news story quoting White House advisor and former EPA chief Carol Browner admitting that the decision had already been made to make the endangerment finding. Ian Talley, “EPA Set to Move Toward Carbon-Dioxide Regulation: Climate Czar Says Agency Will Determine That Greenhouse Gas Endangers Public, Propose New Emissions Rules,” Wall Street Journal, Feb. 23, 2009. Administrator Jackson forwarded that story by email, Subject: CB, to Associate Administrator for Congressional Affairs David McIntosh who responded, in toto, “I went less far than this, and unlike her, I did not make the statement publicly. And unlike her, I was responding to a direct question from a Member of Congress. I’ve prepared Allyn” [Brooks-LaSure, EPA spokesman]. Mar. 6, 2009 email from McIntosh to Jackson, Subject: CB.
[13] Mar. 14, 2009 email from Heinzerling to Jackson, cc: McIntosh, Subject: Re: Fw: memo to President.
[14] Mar. 15, 2009 email from Heinzerling to Jackson, cc: McIntosh, Subject: Re: Fw: memo to President.
[15] March –, 2009 Decision Memo, From Lisa P. Jackson, Subject: Potential Presidential Announcement of EPA’s “Endangerment Finding” on Greenhouse Gases.
[16] In March 2009, Dr. Alan Carlin authored a 98-page study which severely criticized the scientific basis for the Agency’s handling of this matter. This story became public when the Competitive Enterprise Institute released a series of emails to Dr. Carlin from NCEE director Al McGartland, stating that Carlin’s study would not be disclosed and that he was to stop working on global warming issues because criticizing EPA’s position would only cause trouble. See, e.g., https://cei.org/blog/epa-considers-closing-ncee-dr-alan-carlins-unit/. See also, e.g., “In their recent draft of an endangerment-finding technical support document (TSD), scientists at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conclude that carbon dioxide emissions are a public health hazard and should be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Federal law requires that regulations be based on scientific information that is “accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased”; the most recent available; and collected by the “best available methods.” The EPA’s TSD on carbon emissions violates all of these requirements. Staff researcher Dr. Alan Carlin, given just a few days to review the draft TSD, took EPA to the woodshed because the report offered little more than a bibliography of out-of-date reports and research rather than a rigorous scientific inquiry into the subject. The Carlin report’s preface clearly shows that the EPA abdicated its position of scientific authority on the subject.” Robert Peltier, “Politics vs. Science at EPA: The Carlin Matter Revisited,” MasterResource.org, August 6, 2009, https://www.masterresource.org/epa-endangerment-finding/politics-vs-science-at-epa-the-carlin-matter-revisited/.
[17] Mar. 16, 2009 email from Carlin to Steve Newbold, cc: McGartland, John Davidson and Chris Dockins, Subject: Fw: . on the Endangerment TSD.
[18] Mar. 17, 2009 email from McGartland to Carlin, cc: John Davidson, Steve Newbold, Subject: Re: endangerment comments??
[19] June 8, 2009 Memorandum to Administrator Jackson from David McIntosh, RE: “Tuesday 12:00 Meeting with Democratic Senators about Climate Policy,” released by EPA in response to FOIA request 2026-EPA-00237_1434262. https://govoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/2026-EPA-00237-Records.pdf
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