EPA seeks to repeal ‘holy grail' finding for climate regulation
The 'endangerment finding' is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants, and more pollution sources.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin attends a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Event in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, May 22, 2025, in Washington. [Photo: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File]
BY Associated Press
Listen to this Article More info
0:00 / 0:00
President Donald Trump 's administration on Tuesday proposed revoking a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.
The proposed Environmental Protection Agency rule would rescind a 2009 declaration that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
The 'endangerment finding' is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the proposed rule change on a podcast ahead of an official announcement set for Tuesday in Indiana.
Subscribe to the Daily newsletter.Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day
Privacy Policy
|
Fast Company Newsletters
Repealing the endangerment finding 'will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America,' Zeldin said on the Ruthless podcast.
'There are people who, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country,' Zeldin said. 'They created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence, in many cases, a lot of segments of our economy. And it cost Americans a lot of money.'
The EPA proposal must go though a lengthy review process, including public comment, before it is finalized, likely next year. Environmental groups are likely to challenge the rule change in court.
Zeldin called for a rewrite of the endangerment finding in March as part of a series of environmental rollbacks announced at the same time in what he said was 'the greatest day of deregulation in American history.' A total of 31 key environmental rules on topics from clean air to clean water and climate change would be rolled back or repealed under Zeldin's plan.
He singled out the endangerment finding as 'the Holy Grail of the climate change religion' and said he was thrilled to end it 'as the EPA does its part to usher in the Golden Age of American success.'
Tailpipe emission limits also targeted
The EPA also is expected to call for rescinding limits on tailpipe emissions that were designed to encourage automakers to build and sell more electric vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
Environmental groups said Zeldin's action denies reality as weather disasters exacerbated by climate change continue in the U.S. and around the world.
'As Americans reel from deadly floods and heat waves, the Trump administration is trying to argue that the emissions turbocharging these disasters are not a threat,' said Christy Goldfuss, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. 'It boggles the mind and endangers the nation's safety and welfare.'
Under Zeldin and Trump, 'the EPA wants to shirk its responsibility to protect us from climate pollution, but science and the law say otherwise,' she added. 'If EPA finalizes this illegal and cynical approach, we will see them in court.'
advertisement
Three former EPA leaders have also criticized Zeldin, saying his March announcement targeting the endangerment finding and other rules imperiled the lives of millions of Americans and abandoned the agency's dual mission to protect the environment and human health.
'If there's an endangerment finding to be found anywhere, it should be found on this administration because what they're doing is so contrary to what the Environmental Protection Agency is about,' Christine Todd Whitman, who led EPA under Republican President George W. Bush, said after Zeldin's plan was made public.
The EPA proposal follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report 'on the legality and continuing applicability' of the endangerment finding.
Conservatives and some congressional Republicans hailed the initial plan, calling it a way to undo economically damaging rules to regulate greenhouse gases.
But environmental groups, legal experts and Democrats said any attempt to repeal or roll back the endangerment finding would be an uphill task with slim chance of success. The finding came two years after a 2007 Supreme Court ruling holding that the EPA has authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Passing court muster could be an issue
David Doniger, a climate expert at the NRDC, accused Trump's Republican administration of using potential repeal of the endangerment finding as a 'kill shot'' that would allow him to make all climate regulations invalid. If finalized, repeal of the endangerment finding would erase current limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, power plants and other sources and could prevent future administrations from proposing rules to tackle climate change.
'The Endangerment Finding is the legal foundation that underpins vital protections for millions of people from the severe threats of climate change, and the Clean Car and Truck Standards are among the most important and effective protections to address the largest U.S. source of climate-causing pollution,' said Peter Zalzal, associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund.
'Attacking these safeguards is manifestly inconsistent with EPA's responsibility to protect Americans' health and well-being,' he said. 'It is callous, dangerous and a breach of our government's responsibility to protect the American people from this devastating pollution.'
Conrad Schneider, a senior director at the Clean Air Task Force, said the Trump administration 'is using pollution regulations as a scapegoat in its flawed approach to energy affordability' and reliability.
He and other advocates 'are dismayed that an administration that claims it cares about cleaner, healthier and safer air is seeking to dismantle the very protections that are required for those conditions,' Schneider said.
—Matthew Daly, Associated Press
The early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Explore Topics
Climate change
Donald Trump
EPA
global warming
greenhouse gas emissions
pollution
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Growing number of Jewish American groups speak out over Gaza famine
As global outrage intensifies over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a growing number of prominent Jewish American organizations, including some traditional defenders of Israel, are speaking out and imploring the country to ensure that humanitarian aid is allowed into Gaza. This week, a UN-backed food security group warned that a 'worst-case scenario of famine' is unfolding in Gaza and health authorities there report dozens of deaths from starvation. On Sunday, the American Jewish Committee, a prominent Jewish advocacy organization, released a statement affirming that it stands with Israel in what it described as 'its justified war to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas and secure the release of the remaining hostages'. At the same time, the group called for Israel to take steps to alleviate civilian suffering. 'We feel immense sorrow for the grave toll this war has taken on Palestinian civilians, and we are deeply concerned about worsening food insecurity in Gaza,' the statement read. 'We urge Israel, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the UN, and all responsible parties involved in aid distribution to increase cooperation and coordination in order to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches Palestinian civilians in Gaza.' The GHF is an Israel- and US-backed aid group that has attracted condemnation for the killings of hundreds of civilians seeking food at the hands of Israeli forces and private contractors. The AJC statement reflected a cautious critique of Israel's aid blockade echoed by other groups noteworthy for their typically staunch support of the country, even as their statements condemned Hamas for refusing to release the Israeli hostages it continues to hold. The Reform movement in North America, which represents the largest Jewish denomination in the US, also issued a lengthy statement: 'Neither escalating military pressure nor restricting humanitarian aid has brought Israel closer to securing a hostage deal or ending the war,' it read. 'Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice the Palestinian people in its pursuit of Israel's destruction, but Israel must not sacrifice its own moral standing in return. Starving Gazan civilians neither will bring Israel the 'total victory' over Hamas it seeks, nor can it be justified by Jewish values or humanitarian law.' The Rabbinical Assembly, a New York-based association of conservative rabbis, said last week that they were 'increasingly concerned about the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza' and called for 'urgent action to alleviate civilian suffering and ensure aid delivery'. 'Even as we believe Hamas could end this suffering immediately through the release of the hostages and care for its civilian population, the Israeli government must do everything in its power to ensure humanitarian aid reaches those in need,' it added. 'The Jewish tradition calls upon us to ensure the provision of food, water, and medical supplies as a top priority.' Jewish groups associated with the left have been prominent fixtures at protests against Israel's offensive since it began. On Tuesday, 27 rabbis and Jewish clergy affiliated with the group Jews for Food Aid for People in Gaza were arrested at a protest in the Washington office of the Senate majority leader, John Thune. But it appears clear that discomfort has significantly broadened outside the Jewish left. On Monday, eight rabbis were arrested outside the Israeli consulate in New York while protesting against the humanitarian crisis in Gaza – including clergy who had not been so outspoken before. 'The protests we've typically seen at the Israeli consulate in places like that are from the further left of the community,' Phylisa Wisdom, executive director of New York Jewish Agenda, told Gothamist. 'This represents an escalation from rabbis in this political lane.' More than 1,200 rabbis have signed a public letter calling on Israel to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza. 'The Jewish people face a grave moral crisis, threatening the very basis of Judaism as the ethical voice that it has been since the age of Israel's prophets,' reads the letter. 'We cannot remain silent in confronting it.' The developments reflect shifting public support for Israel and the Israeli government within the US, which has accelerated as the war has gone on. A recent Gallup poll reported that support for Israel's military action in Gaza has precipitously declined among US adults, and is now at 32% – the lowest reading since Gallup first asked the question in November 2023. Support for Israel drops further among younger Americans – including US Jews. 'It's a tense time in the Jewish family group chats,' Ezra Klein wrote in a recent New York Times column. 'The consensus that held American Jewry together for generations is breaking down.' While emotional attachment to Israel is widespread among Jewish Americans, polling has consistently found that support for the state's current policies drops with age, a phenomenon perhaps best reflected in the community's support for the New York Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whom opponents have sought to tar with accusations of antisemitism over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. Despite those accusations, however, a recent poll found him leading with 67% of the votes of American Jewish voters in New York under the age of 44. That figure dropped to 25% of voters over 45. 'Zohran Mamdani's triumph in New York City's Democratic primary for mayor has forced, among many Jews, a reckoning with how far they have drifted from one another,' Klein wrote. Organizers of an action planned for Monday in New York City hope that groups that have not turned out before will do so to protest under the banner 'Jews Say: No More'. 'Our tradition teaches us that if we can protest [against] our people's actions and we don't, we are responsible,' said IfNotNow's executive director, Morriah Kaplan, in a statement to the Guardian. The group is helping organize Monday's action. 'As Jews and as Americans, whose government is funding this atrocity, we all must choose whether we want to bear responsibility for a policy of forced mass starvation.' The shift is also playing out within institutions whose members want their leaders to take a tougher stance on a country many had long reflexively supported. More than 200 alumni from Young Judaea, a Zionist youth group, this week called on the organization in an open letter to depart from its pro-Israel line to speak out against starvation in Gaza and call for a permanent ceasefire, including a release of the hostages. 'We see our families and friends, colleagues and teachers, rabbis and Jewish institutions – in Israel and abroad – join a growing movement to stand courageously in opposition to these policies,' the letter reads. 'Young Judaea cannot remain silent in this moment and maintain any moral credibility.'
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Senate heads home with no deal to speed confirmations as irate Trump tells Schumer to ‘go to hell'
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Schumer said a rules change would be a 'huge mistake,' especially as Senate Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass spending bills and other legislation moving forward. Advertisement 'Donald Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing,' Schumer said. The latest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have gradually escalated their obstruction of the other party's executive branch and judicial nominees over the last two decades, and as Senate leaders have incrementally changed Senate rules to speed up confirmations — and make them less bipartisan. Advertisement In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump's nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (center) during a news conference after a policy luncheon at the Capitol on Tuesday. Mariam Zuhaib/Associated Press Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind through dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the process. But Republicans hoped to make a deal with Democrats instead, and came close several times over the last few days as the two parties and the White House negotiated over moving a large tranche of nominees in exchange for reversing some of the Trump administration's spending cuts on foreign aid, among other issues. The Senate held a rare weekend session on Saturday as Republicans held votes on nominee after nominee and as the two parties tried to work out the final details of a deal. But it was clear that there would be no agreement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday evening and told Republicans to pack it up and go home. 'Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!' Trump posted on Truth Social. 'Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country.' Thune said afterward that there were 'several different times' when the two sides thought they had a deal, but in the end 'we didn't close it out.' It's the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn't allowed at least some quick confirmations. Thune has already kept the Senate in session for more days, and with longer hours, this year to try and confirm as many of Trump's nominees as possible. Advertisement But Democrats had little desire to give in without the spending cut reversals or some other incentive, even though they too were eager to skip town after several long months of work and bitter partisan fights over legislation. 'We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,' Schumer said.
Wall Street Journal
4 hours ago
- Wall Street Journal
The Trump Administration's New Take on Climate Change - Opinion: Potomac Watch
Full Transcript This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated. Speaker 1: From the Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Kyle Peterson: The Trump administration moves to repeal the so-called endangerment finding, which is a linchpin of regulations of federal greenhouse gas emissions. Meantime, the Energy Department releases a report with a new view of climate change from the federal government. Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal. We are joined today by my colleagues, columnist Allysia Finley and Kim Strassel. The endangerment finding is what underlies a lot of federal regulations of greenhouse gas emissions, but the Environmental Protection Agency is now moving to undo that. Let's listen to Energy Secretary Chris Wright discussing that this week. Chris Wright: When I heard the endangerment finding announcement 17 years ago, that they had found, as someone who was already involved in the climate discussion, was already involved in the energy world, clearly they didn't look at the data. They didn't understand climate change. They didn't appreciate how energy works. But this ruling happened, and it happened because they couldn't do it through the House and the Senate and the presidency, the normal lawmaking process. They found a backdoor way to take away your freedom and to make your life more expensive and shrink your life opportunities. Kyle Peterson: Allysia, give us some of the background here. What is this endangerment finding, and why is it so important to a lot of the regulations that have taken place over those past 17 years in Washington? Allysia Finley: So this endangerment finding goes back to 2007 Supreme Court case, in which you have many Democratic states sued the Bush administration and claimed that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gas emissions, because they are a pollutant that endangers the public health and welfare. Now, the Clean Air Act only gives express authority to the EPA to regulate what are known as six criteria pollutants, and these are things that clearly do harm to human health, can make you sick, for instance, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, ozone. These have direct effects on human health. Now, what the Supreme Court ruled was, well, okay, but we're going to order the EPA, they have an obligation to review all the evidence, nonetheless, to consider whether greenhouse gas emissions, which the justices deemed an air pollutant under a very broad, capacious interpretation of the law, endangers human health and welfare. And not surprisingly, the Obama administration came back in 2009, said, well, we do think that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, and they provided a ream of cherry-picked studies that claim, well, greenhouse gas emissions, through indirect effects, increase global warming and can affect the climate, and that therefore can harm human health, safety. Rising sea levels, higher temperatures can increase perhaps allergies and the spread of diseases. Even though there's a lot of uncertainty, and for the most part, there's a lot of uncertainty about these claims. And for the most part, they really haven't been borne out by more rigorous studies. And so, this 2009 endangerment finding therefore provided the pretext for the EPA to go in and regulate greenhouse gas emissions across the entire economy. Now, the Obama administration focused more on the vehicle tailpipe emissions, so to restrict or limit how much CO2 can be emitted by cars, and this ended up becoming essentially a back door EV mandate that was begun under Obama and continued under Biden. What it also did was, it embarked on its clean power plan that effectively forced coal and natural gas plants to shut down because they didn't meet the greenhouse gas emission standards for power plants, and the other kind of kink in this role was that it would've required these fossil fuel plants to subsidize renewable plants. Now, you'll recall that the Supreme Court eventually ruled in 2022 that the Clean power plant under Obama was unlawful, that the EPA didn't even have the authority to do it, but they didn't address this broader question of whether EPA even has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. And so, now with the Trump EPA, Lee Zeldin is coming out and saying, no, we actually don't think we do have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Kyle Peterson: To underline that point, this is some of the language that the Supreme Court was looking at in the Clean Air Act in that Massachusetts VEPA ruling. It says that the EPA "shall regulate any emissions of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles which in the EPA administrator's judgment shall contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." So, the two questions here, Kim. First, the Supreme Court said in that 5-4 decision that the Clean Air Act and that language does apply to greenhouse gases that may be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. And then the EPA, as Allysia describes, went back and found that that endangerment was, in fact, happening. But part of the argument here is that this is not a pollutant in the way that Congress might have been thinking about that when it passed the Clean Air Act initially. Greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, are not, things get spewed out into the air and you breathe them in and they make you sick. And so, I assume that that's part of the argument from the Trump administration here, is that we are going back to what we think was originally meant by Congress and these lawmakers when they passed the Clean Air Act in the first place. Kim Strassel: Something to know about that 2007 decision that Allysia referenced, which is that it was a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court, a very close run thing. And this was a very different court that made the decision. I mean, this was back in the days with swing votes of Anthony Kennedy, et cetera. And it was deeply criticized, because if you actually read the clear text of the Clean Air Act, there is no mention of greenhouse gases. So this was very much the court saying, well, we're going to take the kind of living statute approach here and just now say it's okay to also include this. When in reality, those of us out there always argued, if Congress really believed something, an issue this large was something that Congress wants to have addressed via the Clean Air Act or by a new statute, it should have to pass legislation. But that's what ended up happening. Now, of course, remember we've got a very, very different court these days, and that's crucial to the argument that the Zeldin EPA is making, is that under the new majority that we've had, they have talked a lot about, for instance, the Major Questions doctrine and this argument that you can't go hiding elephants in mouse holes, and that if Congress didn't specifically say something, then most likely the bureaucrats do not have the authority. And so, that's the fundamental rationale that Zeldin used as he put this out and said, under our judgment, looking again at more recent Supreme Court findings and rulings, we don't think that we actually have the authority to go this far. Because one other thing I just want to clarify, because it's very confusing to a lot of people, and it's deliberate on behalf of climate activists, is they like to make it sound as though greenhouse gases are pollution, and they're not. There is nothing wrong with CO2. It does not cause health problems, as Allysia noted. It's a very different category of everything else that is regulated under the Clean Air Act. And in fact, just a funny thing, to a certain extent, to the degree that we have those other pollutants and they create, for instance, things like smog, which CO2 does not do, scientists actually believe that smog has an, interestingly, a cooling effect on the planet to a certain degree. Not that we should want more of it, but what I am saying is that actual pollution is not contributing to global warming. Kyle Peterson: Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. Welcome back. Allysia, on the point of the legal lay of the land here, I've seen some skeptics, and not on the left, but on the right saying that because there is this record of a decade and a half of the EPA talking about the endangerment of climate change, that any attempt to reverse that by the Trump administration might get tangled up in the courts. What do you make of that objection to this? And could this be, would this be, should this be, I mean, is there going to be an opportunity maybe for the Supreme Court at some point to take another look at that 5-4 Massachusetts VEPA ruling, and another consideration, with new, more Originalist, Textualist justices, to consider what a pollutant under the Clean Air Act actually is? Allysia Finley: Right. So I think the Trump administration is hoping to tee this up, Massachusetts VEPA to tee this up, to reconsider whether the EPA even has authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants. And to Kim's point, this seemed to be a major questions that should be left for Congress. Now, what I would expect to happen is, I expect the Democratic states and maybe some climate groups will sue and challenge the EPA once an administrative result comes out with the final finding of rescinding the endangerment finding. And then there's going to be a couple questions here. One, do those Democratic and climate groups even have standing, legal standing to sue in federal court? I raise that because actually, at the Supreme Court in the Massachusetts VEPA case, you had the conservatives hold that the Democratic states didn't have standing to challenge the EPA's failure to regulate. So courts could actually just hold that while these states don't even have standing to sue, or climate groups don't have standing to sue because they haven't been directly harmed by the rescission of this endangerment findings. So that's one possibility. Now, the other possibility is they find that they do, or the federal courts, lower courts do, and then this kicks it up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court now, they may also revisit that standing question. But they also have an opportunity to revisit this Massachusetts VEPA decision and extend their major questions doctrine here. And what I think is really important to recall and remember is that Democrats in Congress in 2009 did seek to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. There was a cap and trade program that they were trying to pass. It passed the House. It died in the Senate, as it turns out, because there was opposition from Democrats at the time in the Senate, blue dog Democrats from states like Arkansas, Indiana, who didn't want to walk that plank, and you had the famous Joe Manchin ad in 2010 vowing to that he'd shoot the cap and trade bill. And so, this is relevant because it shows that this really is a question that Congress should and did attempt to address. They just didn't have the political support to do it at the time. And what the Obama administration did is, they basically did an end run around Congress. Kyle Peterson: In the meantime this week, the energy Department also released a report on climate change. It is titled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate, written by five Ph.D.s. Kim, this is part of what you talk about in your column on Friday under the headline, the Rise of the Climate Right, and later you talk about energy Secretary Chris Wright rallying the nascent climate right. So, give us a sense of what do you mean by, what is the climate, right? Kim Strassel: Well, this report, just to put this in context, I think is really important, because it actually goes hand in hand with what the EPA did. That's why they were released simultaneously. If the EPA ruling the rescission of the endangerment finding was essentially taking away the legal authority of the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant, this report was seeking to reframe the science that the federal government has depended on under the Obama and Biden administrations as a justification to take the very extreme steps that they did. And Chris Wright's complaint has been that a lot of that data was cherry-picked to just show worst case scenarios, and that one problem is that the American public has not really heard the truth about the totality of climate science, which is that it's deeply unsettled. There are so many questions that we don't really have answers to, and this media narrative that you hear constant, this drumbeat in the New York Times and elsewhere that we're headed toward a doomsday catastrophe scenario is not justified if you actually even look at the IPCC reports and other things. If you go look at the data, it shows much more profoundly that uncertainty and the big questions and the variations that are out there. And the reason I think this is important politically... That's a question of policy, the report itself, and it's a good report, I do suggest people read it. But politically, if you look back over the history of the last 30 or 40 years, the conservative movement has somewhat struggled about how to handle these climate wars, and for a long time, they simply rejected the argument that the earth was warming, and thus leading to the term climate denier. Obviously, as the planet has warmed some, that's been a harder position to hold, and so then they kind of moved to trying to say, this is just too expensive for us to do, and attacking the Democrats on that part. That was, in fact, played a huge role in it being shot down in the Senate back in 2010, the episode Allysia was talking about. It was effective political strategy, but not a long-term one, because as this narrative has grown, this incomplete narrative, mostly by the press and activists. People became more and more worried about this. And this marks the first time, I would argue, that you've had an elected leader in an administration that's now willing to completely go toe to toe with the left instead on the science, and to say, yes, our climate is changing. Nobody is denying that, and if you read the report, it makes it very clear. But here's all the stuff that you guys have not heard yet, and it is not part of the debate that needs to be. For instance, that there are aspects of global warming that are beneficial, including to agricultural production. That we still do not know yet the extent to which humans play a role in climate change. That our models are all over the map, and the fact that we can't get agreement on them is kind of concerning, because it means we're doing a lot of guesswork. That climate change has not had much of an economic impact, nor is it expected to have much an economic impact. And, I think this is an important one, that even if the United States takes drastic climate policy action, it will have a negligible or no effect in global climate questions. So, report's out there, but I just think both from a policy perspective and a political perspective, this marked a little bit of a moment. Kyle Peterson: Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker, "Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast." Speaker 1: From the Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac watch. Kyle Peterson: Welcome back. This report is quite in the weeds on some of these questions about uncertainty in climate modeling. It talks about the changing pH of ocean water, for example, often called ocean acidification. They take issue with that term. But notable, this is a section from the foreword by the energy secretary. He writes, "Climate change is real and it deserves attention, but it is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty." He goes on to say, "Climate change is a challenge, not a catastrophe, but misguided policies based on fear rather than facts could truly endanger human wellbeing," unquote. Allysia, I guess my read of this is, the report will be taken for what it is. I mean, government agencies often issue reports. People can read them or not read them. They can have that effect. But it is an interesting statement about the energy secretary and the US government's view potentially of its policy and its approach toward these issues, again, emphasizing in the energy secretary's view that climate change is real and it is a challenge, but it is one that does not necessitate some of the policy changes that have been pushed in recent years, and particularly the idea in some quarters that the response to climate change needs to be pushing back people's standard of living by maybe years or decades. Allysia Finley: Well, I think all that's right. The Trump administration really wants to focus on improving standards of living, and the best way, in the US and abroad, the best way to do that is probably to unleash cheap natural gas and boost production. That's also, by the way, if you really care about climate change, that's the least expensive, most technologically feasible way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But to the broader point, cold weather kills many more people than hot weather does, and so, providing cheap sources of fuel will reduce the number of deaths. And not only that, providing more cheap, abundant energy will allow more electrification. And what I mean electrification, there are many people in sub-Saharan Africa and very poor areas of the world that still don't actually have connection to electricity. And so, therefore, forget about air conditioning or many sanitation. Sanitation requires electricity, too. By connecting these people to the grid, and the easiest way to do that is with fossil fuels, not by building huge solar plants that can't run at all hours of the day. By expanding fossil fuel production, you're actually helping to improve living standards in many places of the world that are currently very poor and suffering diseases and other results of that poverty. Now, back in the US, and what you've been seeing is that energy, or electricity prices in particular, have been increasing over the last four or five years as a result of the administration's policies to promote solar, wind, batteries, notwithstanding all these subsidies going into those areas. That electricity prices have been increasing, and as a result, you're actually having people one fall behind on their utility payments, and two, having to swelter in the heat during heat waves and cut back on their consumption because of the rising prices. And this really, by the way, threatens to row ,living standards, but also US economic growth and manufacturing activity, because one of the largest inputs, or largest cost from manufacturers, is electricity and natural gas. Kyle Peterson: The other thing that always strikes me about the politics around this, Kim, is I don't doubt the sincerity of some of the activists who are saying that climate change is a real, serious threat, needs to be taken more seriously, Al Gore and whatnot. But even after years and decades of that drumbeat, they have not convinced the public of that, or at least to take on added costs to their day-to-day budgets to do that. And you see that whenever there are referendums, votes, ballot initiatives on climate taxes, green taxes, carbon fees and whatnot. Even in pretty blue jurisdictions in the Pacific Northwest and stuff, those things seem to go down by pretty significant margins. There must be people in those states who are voting blue and voting for Democrats for governor because those are the politicians who are running those states, and are nevertheless coming out to the ballot box to oppose those kinds of measures that would add costs to their daily budget and make their lives more difficult. Kim Strassel: If you want a case study in consumer rejection of more full-scale greenhouse gas reduction policies, look to Europe at the moment, where the politicians that have made energy production there extremely expensive and unstable are getting a lot of backlash over their emissions that they have put into effect in recent years. And I think it's a good warning for here in the United States. We've had a couple of our own warnings. Allysia has written brilliantly about some of the blackouts we've seen and grid instability, a lot of which has come from poorly thought through renewable energy projects, et cetera, in places like Texas and elsewhere. And we were headed toward a situation like Europe, which is under the Biden administration, which is why I think it's so important. This Trump administration has not been shy about saying, look, we need to care about resilience. We need to care about stability. We need to care about affordable energy. Chris Wright, who you mentioned and Allysia was talking about, and global energy poverty, this was a mission of his. For much of his adult life, he's had a nonprofit devoted to this that he ran via his company, Liberty Energy, before he came to be the Department of Energy Secretary. And just talking about all of the problems that so many average people around the globe face because of a lack of any affordable energy out there. And this gets to the bigger point too, about the problems of this narrative, which is that they tend to warp the discussion and then make it harder for us to have good priorities in policymaking and decision. And it's just very important that people start to push back, because in recent years, especially under the Biden administration, I mean, it's almost become absurd, the level of manipulated and distorted and incorrect climate reporting out there, that is providing this scary, scary scenario that is simply not supported by what we know at all. And that message needs to get out to more Americans, and this was a good starting point this week. Kyle Peterson: Thank you, Kim and Allysia. Thank you all for listening. You can email us at PWPodcast@ If you like the show, please hit that subscribe button, and we'll be back next week with another edition of Potomac Watch.
