By Steven Cohen, Ph.D., Director of the M.S. in Sustainability Management program, School of Professional Studies
Nearly twenty years ago, a group of states sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. The states won, and the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) decided that greenhouse gases fit within the Act’s definition of “air pollutant.” It further decided that EPA must decide if these pollutants endangered the public’s health and welfare or explain to the Court why these gases posed no danger. In response, in 2009, EPA issued a Clean Air Act finding that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangered public health and welfare, and that motor-vehicle greenhouse gas emissions contributed to that dangerous pollution. Last week, the Environmental Destruction Agency, the successor organization to the EPA, changed its mind and decided that these gases pose no danger.
It is reasonable to debate the types of policies and practices we might adopt to reduce this danger, but it is sheer idiocy to attempt to pretend these dangers to human health and well-being are not caused by the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. That is settled science. If the leaders crowing about deregulation and freeing the economy of constraints want to reduce regulation, that is their choice. But then they must answer to the victims of extreme weather events made worse by global warming. They might start with the parents of the young campers in Texas last summer, swept away by the sudden and unprecedented flash flood that killed them. Then they can turn to the victims of the fires in southern California last summer and tell them that their welfare was not impaired by the sudden and also unprecedented fire that destroyed their homes due to a drought that was also made worse by climate change.
According to a Wall Street Journal editorial celebrating Trump’s move last week:
“…greenhouse gases aren’t toxic and don’t affect air quality, unlike pollutants that the law expressly directs the EPA to regulate. The Obama endangerment finding claims this distinction doesn’t matter because CO2 contributes to rising temperatures, which could indirectly result in downstream harms such as more wildfires, storms and disease...In any event, curbing CO2 emissions in the U.S. will have scant impact on climate because emissions are rapidly rising in China, India and developing countries.”
This editorial is riddled with half-truths and omissions. First, its reading of the Clean Air Act is misleading. A number of years ago I was privileged to attend a class at Columbia University taught by Tom Jorling and Leon Billings, respectively, the Republican and Democratic Staff Directors of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee during the early 1970s who helped lead the bipartisan drafting of the Clean Air Act (enacted in 1970) and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (passed over Richard Nixon’s veto in 1972). They noted in their class that the drafters of the Clean Air Act understood that new pollutants would emerge from new technologies and that science would detect threats to health and well-being that were not yet understood. That is why Section 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act was included in the law and required EPA to regulate emissions that "cause, or contribute to" air pollution, specifically if it "may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." Earth systems science has advanced a great deal in the past half-century, and we have learned a great deal about climate change. The Clean Air Act was written to accommodate new knowledge.
The second omission in the Journal’s editorial observes that the U.S. cannot reduce climate change on its own and that some countries are increasing their greenhouse gas emissions. That is true, but they ignore the fact that many developed countries are reducing greenhouse gases as they transition away from fossil fuels. It also turns out that renewable energy has cost and reliability advantages that the Journal fails to mention. Moreover, the USA is a very large contributor to the world’s greenhouse gas pollutant load, and we are in no position to ask other nations to reduce emissions while we treat climate change as a hoax. We could influence other nations and help reduce the danger of global warming if we provided leadership. Instead, the Journal, like the Administration, sees no problem with a warming planet.
The Administration’s claim that eliminating rules reducing automobile emissions would reduce the costs of motor vehicles is another fantasy. The effort to accelerate the utilization of electric vehicles is one cause of increased auto prices, but so too are Trump’s tariffs. However, as technology advances, electric vehicles have the potential to be much lower priced than internal combustion engine vehicles. This would be made obvious by a brief visit to China, where they are building state-of-the-art electric vehicles at half the price of American autos, both electric and internal combustion powered. Doubling down on old technology threatens the global viability of the American auto industry.
Fortunately, Trump and his Environmental Destruction Agency (EDA) are not the only power players in this policy arena. A conservative Supreme Court has prohibited EPA from promulgating some regulations, but EPA was required to issue an endangerment finding by the Court itself, and just as the science of climate change is unambiguous, so too is the Clean Air Act’s requirement to assess emerging threats. What you do about those threats is a policy issue subject to debate. However, denying the scientific fact of the threat and ignoring the words of the Clean Air Act is an overreach that will hopefully fail. The Court typically does not like reversing itself, and so I assume that when they finally are required to decide on this, their response may not be what the Administration is hoping for.
The response from stakeholders to rescinding the endangerment finding will be swift and predictable. A coalition of states and environmental organizations will file immediate legal challenges. This will begin with states seeking a stay or pause of the reversal of the endangerment finding while litigation proceeds, arguing irreparable harms from increased emissions and disruption to state programs. In addition to litigation, states (especially those already implementing climate programs) are likely to rely on their own powers to continue decarbonization. For example, states will deploy power-sector rules via utility regulation, building codes, zoning, state clean vehicle programs, and congestion pricing to maintain policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I suspect the language of policy may change, and rather than focusing on climate targets, we will see policies promoting grid, reduced traffic, and building modernization. From a business perspective, this effort to eliminate federal regulation may sound good, until companies are compelled to comply with the scores of state and local rules that will likely emerge.
The Trump Administration’s ability to bring about radical change may finally start to fade. The police state tactics of ICE have been rejected by the vast majority of Americans, compelling ICE to declare victory and leave Minnesota. ICE abuses in small towns in middle America are engendering widespread opposition to their tactics. The lunacy of vaccine skepticism promoted by RFK Jr. is being rejected by medical societies and many state governments. The New York State Department of Health has officially joined the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), in the face of the Administration’s retreat from nearly every form of international engagement. A Grand Jury recently refused to indict members of Congress for advising the military to resist unlawful orders. A federal judge told the Secretary of Defense (or War) he could not demote Senator and retired veteran Mark Kelly for exercising his right to free speech. The President’s approval ratings keep dropping, and a small number of Republicans are starting to oppose a few of his policies. Presidents typically only have a few hundred days to initiate policies during their term, and it appears that Trump 2 is not immune to those political dynamics. His ability to dominate the news cycle continues, but as Bad Bunny’s success at the Super Bowl demonstrated, America’s culture is moving in a different direction than that expressed by Trump and his base.
Which brings us back to climate change. I believe that this new effort to upend climate policy will never leave the realm of symbolic politics. This is because the planet is getting warmer, and the impact of global warming is unpredictable. That unpredictability creates risk, and that risk must be better understood to both mitigate it and reduce its impact. Businesses investing capital struggle to understand and price a wide variety of risks. They do not have the luxury of climate denial—they have too much skin in the game to view the world through the lens of ideological fantasy. They understand that agriculture, supply chains, and the built environment are all put at risk by extreme weather, global warming, and sea level rise. State and local governments also must deal with the reality of our warming planet. Floods, fire, hurricanes, drought, extremes of heat and cold, and all manner of climate-accelerated extreme weather events require that they invest in infrastructure and emergency response capacity. Rather than focusing on the existence of the problem, our discussions should focus on what to do to address the problem. We cannot instantly end greenhouse gas emissions without destroying the world economy. But how can a transition to a circular, less polluting economy be managed where economic growth continues without destroying the planet? Ideological approaches by both climate advocates and climate deniers have dominated the discussions when we need real analysis and a discussion dominated by pragmatic realism.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About the Program
The Columbia University M.S. in Sustainability Management program offered by the School of Professional Studies in partnership with the Climate School provides students cutting-edge policy and management tools they can use to help public and private organizations and governments address environmental impacts and risks, pollution control, and remediation to achieve sustainability. The program is customized for working professionals and is offered as both a full- and part-time course of study.
