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We used to think of the US Environmental Protection Agency as the site where groundbreaking scientific research took place. One of the most important areas of inquiry by its scientific staff was released to the public in 2009, when the US EPA found that greenhouse gas emissions threatened public health and welfare.
No more. In 2025 the EPA rescinded this finding.
Rarely do federal websites any longer outline the cause-and-effect factors between human activities and climate change. It is no matter that, according to NASA, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists – 97% – agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change. The EPA has turned its proverbial back on stark evidence that emissions from burning coal, oil, and gas have fueled global warming. Today the EPA fails to calculate how setting maximum emissions levels correlates with saving human lives.
EPA cuts to funding and staffing are a big part of the problem — more than 1,500 biologists, chemists, and other experts at the EPA’s Office of Research and Development have been laid off, reassigned, or pressured to retire.
