Why the EPA’s Latest Move Could Worsen the Climate Crisis

Why EPA’s last decision could worsen the climate crisis

By Rachel Cleetus & Carlos Martinez

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a radical effort to remove the conclusion of endangerment, a proposal which not only does not take into account science but also has enormous consequences to stem the climate crisis.

This 2009 legal determination is based on in-depth scientific evidence which indicates that programs of peoping of activities such as the fire of fossil fuels lead climate change and constitute a threat to human health and well-being. This scientific conclusion, which followed a 2007 supreme court decision according to which pedestrian emissions are pollutants covered by the Clean Act, the authority and responsibility of the EPA have firmly established the greenhouse gas emissions of vehicles, power plants, oil and gas operations and other sources of these pollutants.

Meeting this observation is a blatant attempt to escape this responsibility and to comply with the interests of fossil combustibles. In addition to proposing to repeal the conclusion of endangering, the administrator of EPA, Lee Zeldin, also proposed the repeal of greenhouse gas standards for vehicles and power plants, the two largest sources of American global warming. Vehicle standards should reduce global warming emissions by more than seven billion tonnes over the next three decades, and carbon carbon pollution standards were to limit emissions of 1.38 billion metrics of carbon dioxide until 2047.

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As such, if the conclusion is successfully canceled, the EPA will be distant active and intentionally from its responsibility to combat climate change. This abdication, associated with actions that the Trump administration and the Congress take which hinder federal policies and investments of clean energy and stimulate fossil fuels, are a hard blow for us, and will probably mean that nation’s emissions will continue to increase at a time when science is clear that they must be lowered urgently.

Zeldin based on the report on the endangering of a communicated report from the Ministry of Energy (DOE) which claims to be a “critical examination of the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the American climate”, according to the title. But in addition to being manufactured by five known climatic opposites, the report is riddled with climate denials, evidence selected by cherry and distortions of the facts undoubtedly well established on climate change. For example, the report claims that the increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is good for agriculture without recognizing the significant negative impacts of heat, drought and floods on crops.

Several scientists whose articles have been cited in the report criticized the false representation of their results, stressing how the DEE report has often declared the opposite of what the studies evaluated by peers have really concluded. Ben Santer, who is one of these scientists, said that the DOE report contradicts its conclusions while citing its research on climatic “fingerprints”. In a day after being published, the report was already good and completely on the way to be completely demystified.

But in the meantime, we look at the very agency created to protect public health and the environment completely abandons its mission and rather embrace a pro-fossil fuel program. Even more alarming, we are witnessing the US government to adopt discussion points on the refusal of the marginal climate as its official position on what scientific evidence has clearly explained. It is a dangerous moment for our nation because disinformation and lies replace the facts.

Here is the reality: since 2009, when the conclusion of endangerment has been published, the scientific evidence concerning climate change based on fossil fuels and its impacts on people and the planet have not become clearer and more sober. More than 99% of the scientific literature evaluated by peers and each major scientific body in the world agrees on the fundamental facts that climate change occurs with clear consequences by playing now, and that our fossil fuel burning is mainly to blame.

The net reduction of these emissions is crucial to limit dangerous climate change. Hundreds of scientists have come together to write major relevant relationships on a global scale, including the fifth national climate assessment (NCA5) and the sixth evaluation report of the Intergovernmental Climate Change (AR6), documenting the last science. These reports are based on the work of thousands of underlying research documents and have undergone a rigorous and transparent examination process.

As scientific methods have advanced, the science of attribution is another arena of rapid progress. Scientists can now determine the climate contribution to the probability or severity of the events of the extreme individual weather such as Hurricane Helene, as well as to estimate the amount of emissions that come from large fossil fuels and cement companies contribute to the climate crisis.

At a time when people of the world are in shock from extreme heat waves, aggravating extreme floods and precipitation, intensifying tropical cyclones and catastrophic forest seasons, it is frankly cruel to deny that these extreme disasters affect the health and well-being of people. Extreme time kills, as is clear to the death of so many young children in the floods in Kerrville, Texas, and in East Pakistan last month.

These climatic extremes also ruin livelihoods and also affect the economy. Lost houses, the increase in insurance premiums, unhealthy outdoor working conditions, commercial interruptions and damaged infrastructure are all effects of climate worsening.

With the world about to fully violate the mark of 1.5 degrees Celsius after having briefly crossed it in 2024 – the global climatic objectives are increasingly at risk. There is no time to waste. We must quickly move away from fossil fuels with clean energy. We must quickly bend the global program of shows. However, the United States – the largest historical transmitter in the world – are shamefully and deliberately moving away from the fight, and we all suffered from it.

As scientists, and as people who care about the future of this planet and its incredible forms of life and ecosystems, we must speak! Submit comments to the EPA and the Doe pushing their destructive actions. Undercase your representatives to the congress to defend the interests of their voters and to hold this responsible administration.

Burning the facts and replacing them with propaganda is a characteristic of authoritarian governments. What is ultimately at stake here goes far beyond a scientific discipline or a political result.

This is an article of opinion and analysis, and the points of view expressed by the author or the authors are not necessarily those of American scientist.

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