By repealing the EPA’s determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health, the president is denying reality itself
T
he climate crisis is killing people. These deaths are measurable, documented and ongoing. Concluding otherwise is just playing pretend. Studies explain the mechanics, but lived experience supplies the truth. The people who suffer the consequences see the fire rising and water closing in. They need their government’s help.
Despite that, the president of the United States stood at a microphone last Thursday and abdicated his duty to them. “It has nothing to do with public health,” he claimed about the climate crisis while announcing that the federal government would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding”, a determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. “This is all a scam, a giant scam.”
What he was lying about is a truth the federal government – even under his first administration – has embraced for nearly two decades. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the “endangerment finding” in 2009. Drawing upon extensive scientific evidence, the EPA concluded that emissions driving the climate crisis contribute to extreme heat, intensified storms, rising sea levels, wildfires and degraded air quality, all of which carry direct consequences for human life and safety.
