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The EPA gives up on climate change
The agency plans to reverse its own legal justification for regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Cameron Peters is a staff editor at Vox.
Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency said today that it plans to reverse its own legal justification for regulating emissions, potentially a major blow to efforts to combat climate change.
Why does the EPA want to do this? EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has described the change, which follows a January executive order by Trump to reexamine the policy, as “the largest deregulatory action in the history of America”; more generally, it’s consistent with the Trump administration’s focus on promoting fossil fuels.
What is the agency actually proposing? In 2009, the EPA reached what is known as the “endangerment finding” — a determination that greenhouse gases are dangerous to human health because of their role in climate change, on which the agency’s efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions rests. Now, the EPA proposes rolling back that finding.
What will the impact be? If the EPA proposal takes effect, it would spell the end of nearly all US climate regulations, including those governing emissions by vehicles, factories, power plants, and more. That change would come even as the US is beginning to face more severe effects of climate change and as the world struggles to fend off warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Is this a done deal? No. The EPA announced its proposal on Tuesday, but before it can reverse the finding, the plan will go through a review process, including a public comment period. It’s also all but certain to be challenged in court by environmental groups.
And with that, it’s time to log off…
Katie Ledecky won her sixth world title in the 1,500-meter freestyle at the swimming world championships in Singapore on Tuesday, and as usual, her competition wasn’t even in frame when she finished the race. As The Athletic points out, her split en route to the full 1,500 distance Tuesday would have been good for the 13th-fastest 800 meters ever swum, and with that win, she hasn’t lost a 1,500-meter race since she was 13 (she’s now 28).
It’s a pretty incredible run of dominance and it’s worth taking a moment to appreciate just how long she’s been the greatest in the world at her event. And with that, we’ll see you back here tomorrow!
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