America’s Environmental Protection Agency is now a voice for climate denialism.
Donald Trump has taken every opportunity to declare that “climate change is a hoax”. On Thursday, the US President made sure that his country’s premier environmental watchdog would also be informed by climate denialism. In what has been described as the biggest deregulatory move in American history, Trump has rolled back the Obama-era Endangerment Finding. The rules required the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to be guided by scientific knowledge about the harm caused by GHGs to the environment and public health. Under Trump, the Department of Energy formed a panel of scientists to write a report, last year, challenging the widely accepted science on the impacts of GHGs. And now, after Thursday’s announcement, the environmental regulator in a country that has historically spewed the greatest amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and remains the second-largest emitter in the world — has given a virtual vote of confidence to climate-disrupting fossil fuels. The agency has drastically scaled back limits on GHG emissions from automobiles.
Transport is the biggest source of GHG emissions in the US. Though electric vehicle (EV) sales increased after the incentives provided by the Joe Biden administration, the transition to climate-friendly transport has been too slow to offset the emissions from fossil-fuel powered cars, buses and trucks. The Trump administration has withdrawn key subsidies to EVs and renewables. Now, as USEPA head Lee Zeldin put it, “automakers will not be pressured to shift their fleet composition towards EVs”. Getting rid of the Endangerment Finding also clears the way for the EPA to repeal limits on GHGs from power plants and oil and gas wells.
The American rollback bucks the trend in global warming mitigation efforts across the world. Renewable energy use is at an all-time high. That said, a number of reports have also underlined the waning of popular enthusiasm around net-zero targets in large parts of the developed world. Much of that is due to misinformation. However, it’s also true that environment-friendly leaders in the developed world — including Biden — have failed to communicate that sustainability means good economics. They failed to root mitigation efforts in equity and fairness. Climate deniers like Trump have thrived as a result.