Revoking the endangerment findings for greenhouse gas emissions is the latest affront to climate scientists and climatologists by Trump as his administration guts the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that have been in place since 2007, when there was a Republican president in the White House.
Seventeen years after the EPA was given responsibility to ensure that the U.S. was serious about carbon emissions and combating global warming, the guardrails to protect the air we breathe and the oceans of the world are being whisked away.
Surprisingly, the energy industry is not happy with this type of change, considering the commitment to present and future renewable projects. The certainty of drawing down carbon emissions has guided the sector’s infrastructure investments for more than a decade and a half. Now, the U.S. administration is telling them to “burn baby burn” when it comes to coal, oil and natural gas to feed America’s energy craving, and to forget about climate change, global warming and proven science.
Back in the 1970s, Exxon scientists already knew that their industry was causing the atmosphere to change and was responsible for the creeping increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas (GHG). They buried the evidence for years while the oil industry continued to expand and feed humanity’s fossil fuel energy addiction. It was good for the bottom line, to hell with what was good for future life on Earth. The fossil fuel industry’s good times continued to roll despite a Republican president’s creation of the EPA back then.
As more scientific evidence reveals CO2 in the atmosphere continuing to rise (see the Keeling Curve), American scientists, both unaffiliated and within the fossil fuel industry, have established a direct link between burning carbon in all its forms and rising atmospheric mean temperatures, increasing ocean acidification and extreme weather events. Today, the Keeling Curve data, tracked in Hawaii by the Mauna Loa Observatory since 1958, is about to be defunded in the new Trump administration’s budget.
This is what the Keeling data shows. The most recent CO2 reading as of July 2025 is approximately 427.5 parts per million (ppm). Other U.S. laboratory measures show readings as high as 430.5 ppm. In March 1958, the initial Mauna Loa reading was 313 ppm. That means CO2 levels in the atmosphere have risen between 114 and 117 ppm in 67 years, a 37% increase.
The Mauna Loa data on CO2 correlates with global average temperature rise, which today is reaching a mean close to the lower target limit of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) agreed to by the signatories of the Paris Climate Agreement. Why was 1.5 chosen? This lower threshold was seen as the fairest to allow the most vulnerable populations on Earth to continue to thrive without the threat of irreversible climate tipping points, food insecurity, global sea level rise, and reduced habitability from extreme heat.
So, what American and other scientists from around the world have discovered is no more than a “hoax,” perpetrated by Communist China, and a scam to deceive Americans. In accordance, the U.S. administration is once more withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. American exceptionalism for this administration is the fare of the day.
The official EPA rollback proposal was revealed on July 29, 2025, in Indianapolis at an automobile dealership by Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA administrator, with the hearty approval of his Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright. The two have described the EPA’s regulations as authoritarian, twisted, and a “scam” with a pretext to assert control over the rights of Americans to choose what they want to buy and drive freely. EPA regulations have been sticking Americans with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every year to support a GHG emissions agenda, rather than one that fulfills America’s current and future energy demands.
It is expected that the threat to public health from ending EPA oversight of the environment will receive pushback from those defending the Clean Air Act and what remains of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act after Trump has taken a hatchet to the latter.
According to David Bookbinder, Director of Law and Policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, in response to this latest EPA announcement stated, “This baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse [gas] pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day.”
Meanwhile, the grim statistics continue to mount related to the consequences of adding megatons of carbon to the atmosphere. Here are just a few:
From 1993 to 2022, more than 765,000 people died from 9,400 extreme weather events that included floods, storms, heat waves and drought. Extreme heat accounted for 30% of those deaths.
In 2024, global deaths from extreme weather events and heat were estimated to be 11,500, with India experiencing 3,200.
More than 500 deaths from flash floods in Nigeria in May 2025.
From June 23 to July 2, 2025, 2,300 people died from an extreme heat event that impacted 12 European cities.
Flash floods from extreme rain events in 2024 and 2025 have killed 579 Americans in Texas, the Appalachians and in several southeastern states, well above the 25-year average of 85 annually.
Flash floods in Pakistan in 2024 killed at least 1,000 and displaced more than 140,000, with many still living in tents today, while new floods killed 178 in July 2025.
With a little over half a year in 2025, heatwaves, floods and other extreme weather are expected to surpass 2024 totals.
The future doesn’t bode well for the planet with an anti-climate change regime in charge in Washington. What should we expect in terms of short and long-term impacts?
Key consequences and implications for America include:
If power plants currently responsible for 25% of U.S. GHG emissions no longer have to implement decarbonization, renewable investments will dry up, and emission reductions by the sector will begin to creep upward again to meet rising energy demand.
If vehicle tailpipe emission standards are removed and fuel mileage efficiency standards loosened, the automotive and transportation sector, currently the largest source of direct GHGs in the U.S., will see carbon emission increases.
With the removal of other climate change regulatory limits, the risks of climate change impacts linked to extreme weather, heatwaves, and flooding will continue to increase. The cost to insure homes will continue to escalate, with parts of the country prone to extreme weather no longer insurable.
With the so-called savings that these EPA rollbacks are expected to produce, estimated at $54 billion in the budget, there will be false economies as increased emissions worsen climate-related disasters and impose higher healthcare, disaster response and environmental damage costs.
Such are the consequences of the current insanity being demonstrated in the Trump administration.