EPA Walks Back Greenhouse Gas Findings

"The Environmental Protection Agency is walking back a landmark environmental decision to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

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"Under the clear terms of the Clean Air Act, EPA can avoid taking further action only if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change or if it provides some reasonable explanation as to why it cannot or will not exercise its discretion to determine whether they do," Stevens added.

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"The Trump administration justifies this assault on science and our health by falsely claiming that U.S. climate-heating pollution doesn't matter and that it lacks the authority to cut it. That's a lie, and any 6-year-old knows it's wrong to lie," said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, in a statement to ABC News.

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In response to the EPA's request for public input, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conducted a comprehensive independent assessment of the science behind the endangerment finding to help inform the agency's final decision. They released their report in September, concluding the EPA's 2009 determination was accurate and is now supported by stronger scientific evidence, with many uncertainties that existed at the time now resolved.

"[T]he evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute," the report stated.

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Similarly, the United Nations concluded that "health and the climate are inextricably linked, and today the health of billions is endangered by the climate crisis." The U.N. cited severe weather events, toxic air pollution, an increased risk of infectious disease outbreaks, and extreme heat as evidence that human-amplified climate change poses a significant danger to people.

In 2021, 200 leading medical journals issued a joint editorial stating that "the science is unequivocal: a global increase of 1.5 C above the pre-industrial average and the continued loss of biodiversity risk catastrophic harm to health that will be impossible to reverse.""

We've seen such a drastic comeback of the fossil fuel industry in the past year under the Trump administration it is hard to overstate how big of an effect it is going to have.

In 2025 there was about 1244 GW of generating capacity (U.S. electricity capacity outlook 2050| Statista). By 2050 generating capacity is projected to more than double to 2809 GW. the current rate of electricity generation has already caused irreparable harm to the atmosphere, and we are projected to more than double the amount of generation that it took us 150 years to create in the next 25 years. The Trump admin is dismantling all of the guard rails that hindered the fossil fuel industry. Who do you think is going to dominate the market for the next 25 years?

EPA to rescind landmark 2009 finding on greenhouse gases' harmful effect on climate - ABC11 Raleigh-Durham

 

This government is
fucking insane!

Anything for the billionaires, fuck everyone else!

 

Political gain over science it's very very sad

 

Also, the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has been rebranded as the National Lab of the Rockies, and is laying off a bunch of renewables researchers:

134 more people laid off from federal renewable energy lab in Golden

 

Hopefully this does not mean the greenLighting of new coal fired plants.
I am hopeful that our nuclear plant in Lacey Twp. can be safely reactivated. It opened in 1968 and ran successfully until it became obsolete three yrs ago.

I suspect that many coal fired plants are also obsolete and need to be replaced no matter what the new rules say.

 

Fuck the climate change greenhouse gas hoax.

Windmills and mandated shitty cars in North America does nothing to protect biodiversity and the wonders of the natural world.

Just more of the same "the left" vs "the right" uselessness.

 

Its not red vs blue its them vs you, the Uni-party just loves ethanol.

 

I really think they keep everyone busy with the climate crap so there is no focus on anything else.

 

New coal plants may not open because corporations will be scared that the government will reverse course as soon as the democrats are in power. But if we get another 8 year republican presidential term after Trump, possibly.

The real way this is going to affect coal is by enabling (or in some cases forcing: Trump Administration Forces Washington’s Last Coal Plant to Stay Open Past Retirement, Needlessly Driving up Electricity Bills and Harming Health ) coal plants to stay open long past their original retirement dates : These 15 Coal Plants Would Have Retired. Then Came AI and Trump. - DeSmog (and this article was published before the EPA GHG walkback mentioned in the OP).

This could also increase the emissions that are allowed to come out of natural gas plants: EPA Proposes Repeal of Biden-Harris EPA Regulations for Power Plants, Which, If Finalized, Would Save Americans More than a Billion Dollars a Year | US EPA

This may only allow fossil plants to operate for a few more years, if we are lucky and new legislation is enacted quickly, but depending on how you look at it -- we are already on borrowed time.

This kind of thing also runs the risk that the US will be left in the stone age (or the coal age) while China and the Europeans corner the renewables markets of the future.