Good morning. Here’s a secret: Most CEOs believe climate change is real. They need to deal with it to stay profitable, create resilient operations, and remain relevant to their customers and employees. Texas leads the country in the production of both fossil fuels and renewable energy, in part because everyone knows the state’s power grid needs all the help it can get. Every time there’s a development that could reverse corporate action on climate change, from the Supreme Court’s 2024 reversal of the Chevron doctrine to the U.S. Department of Energy’s stunning report last year that downplayed global warming, I check in with leaders to see if they’re changing their strategy. The answer is they’re not.
That fact was reinforced yesterday when I called around for reaction to the Trump administration’s termination of the 2009 “endangerment” finding that gives the Environmental Protection Agency a legal duty to regulate six greenhouse gases that threaten human health. “This is a pattern we’ve seen swing back and forth in Washington,” one manufacturing leader told me. “We can’t plan around election cycles.”
This person and others did express concern that a Supreme Court challenge could permanently damage the EPA, creating an uneven playing field while reducing incentives to curb greenhouse gases at a critical time for the planet. Energy reporter Jordan Blum noted that it could extend the lives of existing coal plants but also found the overall impact on business is likely to be limited. What’s different is that, in this political climate, a lot of leaders don’t want to talk on the record about what they’re doing.
