The Assault on Climate Science Begins
In a move that climate scientists are calling “extreme” and “dangerous,” the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump is preparing to reverse a fundamental scientific finding that has guided U.S. climate policy for over 15 years. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has recommended to the White House that the agency overturn its 2009 “Endangerment Finding,” which established that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.
This isn’t just another policy reversal—it represents a direct attack on established science at a time when climate impacts are becoming increasingly severe across America and the world.
What Is the Endangerment Finding?
The 2009 Endangerment Finding wasn’t a political decision but a scientific one, mandated by the Supreme Court. After the Court ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the EPA was legally required to determine whether these emissions endangered public health.
The resulting 52-page assessment concluded that six key greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—”threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”
This finding has served as the legal foundation for nearly all federal climate regulations since then. Without it, the government’s ability to limit greenhouse gas emissions would be severely compromised.
The Science Has Only Grown Stronger
What makes this potential reversal particularly alarming is that the scientific evidence supporting the Endangerment Finding has become substantially stronger since 2009.
“The scientific support for the endangerment finding was very strong in 2009. It is much, much stronger now,” Stanford University environment program chief Chris Field told the Associated Press. “Based on overwhelming evidence from thousands of studies, the well-mixed greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare. There is no question.”
A 2019 review published in the journal Science found that in nearly all categories examined in the original assessment, scientific confidence in climate harms had increased. The review also identified four additional areas of harm not included in the original finding: national security threats, economic damage, increased violence, and ocean acidification.
Rejecting American Scientific Leadership
In a bitter irony, the Trump administration’s move would reject scientific discoveries made by American researchers. As noted by Bill McKibben in The New Yorker, it was American scientists who first documented the accumulation of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
Charles David Keeling, working with funding from the National Science Foundation, began measuring atmospheric CO₂ at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958. His work produced the famous “Keeling Curve,” showing the relentless rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Later, NASA scientist James Hansen built on this research to warn Congress in 1988 that human-caused climate change was already underway.
“American science had performed a remarkable feat: it had given us a timely early warning of the single greatest danger our species has ever faced,” McKibben writes. The current administration’s actions represent “the clearest potential sign I know of America’s decline.”
Real-World Impacts Already Visible
The EPA’s potential reversal comes as climate impacts intensify across the country. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2024 saw 27 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in the U.S., causing at least 568 deaths and $182.7 billion in damages.
Dr. Courtney Howard, vice chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance, describes climate change as “the biggest threat of our time to both health and health systems,” citing heat-related illnesses, worsening asthma, heart diseases aggravated by wildfire smoke, changing habitats for disease vectors, and crop failures that drive hunger and migration.
Even more concerning, University of Washington scientist Kristie Ebi points out that crops grown under higher CO₂ conditions contain less protein, vitamins, and nutrients—affecting 85% of all plants and creating far-reaching public health implications.
A Broader Attack on Environmental Protection
The move against the Endangerment Finding appears to be part of a larger assault on environmental regulations and agencies. Trump has announced plans to cut the EPA workforce by as much as 65%, with Department of Government Efficiency head Elon Musk stating they will keep only those doing “essential” jobs.
This follows other concerning environmental policy shifts, including Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s recent statement that efforts to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 are “sinister” and “a terrible goal.”
What Happens Next?
Dismantling the Endangerment Finding won’t be easy. The EPA would need to go through a lengthy rulemaking process, including public comments and legal justifications. More importantly, they would need to present compelling scientific evidence contradicting the overwhelming consensus on climate change—a nearly impossible task.
More likely, the administration may follow the pattern established during Trump’s first term: keeping the finding technically intact while reinterpreting it to minimize regulatory impact. This approach allowed them to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan with the much weaker Affordable Clean Energy Rule.
What You Can Do
As this process unfolds, public engagement will be crucial:
- Stay informed about developments and prepare to participate in public comment periods
- Contact your representatives to express concern about attacks on climate science
- Support organizations defending environmental protections through legal challenges
- Share accurate information about climate science with your community
- Vote for candidates who respect scientific consensus and support climate action
The coming months will determine whether decades of scientific progress on climate change will be officially denied by the very government that helped discover it. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
