Michigan AG says climate impacts put citizens ‘in very real jeopardy’

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel testified this week against what she called an “ill-conceived proposal” to rescind federal authority to regulate climate action.

Nessel testified online Aug. 19 before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about her “strenuous” opposition to the effort by the Trump administration to roll back the agency’s greenhouse gas endangerment finding. For more than 15 years that landmark scientific conclusion has provided the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Michigan’s attorney general characterized the rulemaking maneuver as an effort by the federal government under President Donald Trump to “abdicate its legal duty to take action.”

Nessel said that although the state is far from rising sea levels and western wildfires, other impacts of climate change puts Michigan’s residents “in very real jeopardy.”

Related: Wildfire smoke and heat waves force vulnerable Michigan residents indoors

Michigan has grown hotter and experienced increasingly frequent and intense storms, flooding, droughts, and other climate-related impacts, Nessel said. She pointed to ruined cherry crops last year and unsafe air conditions across Michigan from Canadian wildfire smoke.

“The justification for EPA’s decision to abandon its responsibilities to protect all of us from the dangers posed by greenhouse gases is legally incorrect, scientifically unsound, and lacking in common sense,” Nessel said in her virtual testimony.

The EPA proposal must go through a lengthy review process, including an ongoing public review period, before it is finalized, likely next year. Public hearings are happening this week, and the comment period is open through Sept. 22.

Environmental groups are expected to challenge the rule change in court.

This MLive file photo shows U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin at the Flint Water Plant in February 2025.Ayrton Breckenridge | MLive.com

Last month, EPA Director Lee Zeldin announced plans to revoke the 2009 declaration that determined carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health. He criticized those he said are willing to bankrupt the country in the name of climate change, citing pollution regulations on vehicles, airplanes, and industry, Associated Press reported.

The EPA’s proposal follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report “on the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans hailed the plan, calling it a way to undo economically damaging rules to regulate greenhouse gases.

Environmental groups said Zeldin’s action seeks to deny reality even as weather disasters exacerbated by climate change grow worse in the U.S. and around the world.

Related: Michigan ratepayers to share costs of keeping coal plant open with 10 states

Nessel additionally criticized the “regulatory chaos” of this rulemaking maneuver as bad for the environment, businesses, and ordinary Michiganders who rely on the EPA to enforce the federal Clean Air Act. Instead, this effort would “uplift an aging and out of touch fossil fuel industry,” she said.

Last year Nessel filed suit against the fossil fuel industry because of climate change-related damages and expenses.

Fossil fuel use emits carbon into the atmosphere, which leads to global warming through the greenhouse effect. Subsequent temperature increases cause climate change and loss of biodiversity around the planet.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.