This past Thursday, Donald Trump dropped the climatic equivalent of an atomic bomb. He announced the repeal of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 endangerment finding, the basis of the EPA’s ability to regulate climate-warming emissions. “This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history,” proclaimed White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“This is corruption, plain and simple,” countered Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
The administration’s move is an attempt, essentially, to subvert reality. The Obama-era finding established that atmospheric greenhouse gases are bad for human health and welfare, allowing them to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. In 2025, a panel of scientists affirmed the finding, writing: “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused [greenhouse gases] is beyond scientific dispute.”
Condemnation of Trump’s announcement was swift and plentiful, and called out the administration’s baldly transactional relationships with oil and gas producers. “Put simply, this is a gift-wrapped package for the fossil fuel industry,” Manish Bapna, CEO of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, told Inside Climate News. “It is unscientific, it is bad economics, and it is illegal. So we’re gonna fight it.”
Legal experts say the administration may be biting off more than it can chew. “It seems to me unlikely that the [US Supreme Court] would say that the EPA has no power to regulate carbon,” Michael Lewyn, a professor of environmental law at Touro Law Center and critic of environmental regulations, told Grist.
Pat Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law and Graduate School, didn’t mince words when talking to Wired’s Molly Taft. “I don't see any plan, any strategy, any end game...just fuck everything up as much as you can.”
In other environmental news, chemist Elissia Franklin spoke with Inside Climate News reporter Liza Gross about her research on the toxic chemicals in hair products marketed to Black women—and the absence of regulation. Ohio legislators are considering a de facto ban on solar and wind energy projects, and a tribal government in Alaska is suing the administration over its plan to open up the National Wildlife Refuge for drilling.
Sigh. Well, at least we have these photos of adorable baby bats to ease the depression.
—Henry Carnell
