On February 12, President Trump and Lee Zeldin, the head of his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), announced that the agency would no longer recognize the “endangerment rule,” a 2010 EPA decision that climate change is a danger to both human health and the environment. This announcement flies in the face of decades of agreement by scientists, and effectively erases the 2010 decision that allows the EPA to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other major greenhouse gases.
Despite its name, the EPA has never done a good enough job of protecting the environment. The agency typically moves slowly to enact new rules and regulations even when it is obvious that certain activities are a threat to public health. It also has moved cautiously even when individual businesses or entire industries are obviously major sources of pollution or dumping or chemical spills. And of course, the EPA never directly implicates the profit-driven economic system that encourages companies to produce greenhouse gases and pollute in the first place, even though that is the root cause by far of most environmental destruction. The EPA was never the protector of the environment that we need.
But Trump, Zeldin, and others like them have long claimed that the endangerment rule and much of what the EPA does harms the economy and business interests. They claim, as capitalist propogandists have claimed for decades, that getting rid of such regulations will unleash innovation, and that the entire economy will now become more prosperous. Whether they actually believe that or not, the Trump administration is tightly connected to the fossil fuel industry, with hundreds of millions in fossil fuel contributions helping Trump get reelected in 2024. The administration has made it a priority to destroy regulation that slows the profitability of the fossil fuel sector.
By rescinding this rule, Trump is now giving a green light to industries to pollute as much as they want to, and advertising to all industries that the EPA won’t even attempt to do its already limited job.
The Trump administration and its wealthy base of support among the billionaire capitalists and their many corporations are telling us exactly what their priorities are: more profits for themselves to put into their bank accounts.
What do we get out of this? Deadlier air, hotter summers, more intense storms and flooding, drier and drier agricultural land, shortages of fresh water for drinking and farming, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and more.
Once again, Trump’s policies on behalf of the capitalist class are further threatening all of humanity and the world we rely on. We need to stop them.
