The year is 2025, and the scent of manufactured outrage hangs heavy in the air. Under President Trump’s continued reign, his EPA, helmed by the ever-compliant Lee Zeldin, is orchestrating a quiet coup against climate science. Their target? The ‘endangerment finding’ – a crucial linchpin in the fight against climate change.

For those unfamiliar, the endangerment finding, established in 2009, is a legal determination by the EPA that greenhouse gases (GHGs) endanger public health and welfare. This finding, born from a Supreme Court decision forcing the EPA to regulate if endangerment was proven, became the bedrock upon which regulations for emissions from cars, power plants, and other sectors were built. It’s the legal ’cause and effect’ that allows climate action to be justified, a sine qua non of any meaningful effort.

Zeldin’s EPA, however, isn’t directly attacking the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming. Oh no, that would be too blatant, too easily refuted. Instead, they’re employing a tactic as insidious as it is predictable: weaponizing cost-benefit analysis and redefining the definition of harm under the Clean Air Act.

Their strategy, as hinted at in a seemingly innocuous press release buried amidst a blizzard of deregulatory announcements, hinges on questioning whether individual sectors, or even the entire nation, contribute enough pollution to warrant regulation. Think of it as the climate change equivalent of arguing that a single drop of poison can’t possibly be lethal – while conveniently ignoring the accumulating effect of the entire dose.

This approach allows the EPA to avoid the messy business of convening panels of ‘alternative’ scientists to dispute established climate science. Instead, they can focus on inflating the costs of regulation, downplaying the social cost of greenhouse gases (a metric used to estimate the economic damages associated with climate change), and even conjuring up phantom economic benefits from a warming world. It’s a masterful exercise in obfuscation, designed to choke climate action to death by a thousand cuts.

As Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official under George W. Bush, astutely observes, this allows for a swift gutting of climate regulations, avoiding years of arduous work needed to create replacement rules (which, naturally, would be weaker). More dangerously, it throws a wrench into future climate action, forcing any subsequent administration to resurrect the endangerment finding before regulating new sectors. Imagine the legal battles, the delays, the lost time as the planet burns.

This isn’t just about tearing up regulations; it’s about rewriting the rules of the game. By narrowly focusing on U.S. emissions, or even individual industry contributions, the EPA can argue that no single entity’s actions pose a significant danger, effectively absolving everyone of responsibility. This ignores the fundamental reality that climate change is a global problem, demanding collective action, and that every source of pollution, no matter how small, contributes to the overall crisis.

Even worse, the EPA hints at revisiting whether current adaptation and mitigation efforts have rendered the U.S. less vulnerable to climate change. This is a classic deflection tactic, shifting the focus from preventing the problem to simply coping with its consequences. It’s like arguing that since you’ve bought a bigger bucket to bail water from a sinking ship, you no longer need to plug the hole.

The danger here is not just the immediate rollback of regulations, but the long-term chilling effect on climate science and policymaking. By prioritizing short-term economic gains over the health of the planet, the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for a future where climate denialism reigns supreme and the consequences of inaction become irreversible. The silence surrounding this assault speaks volumes, a testament to the corrosive power of political expediency over scientific integrity. We are not just witnessing the dismantling of climate policy; we are witnessing an assault on the very foundation of evidence-based decision-making.

Cet article a été fait a partir de ces articles:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-trumps-epa-plans-to-undo-climate-rules/, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bird-watching-tips-as-migration-season-peaks/, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-bitcoin-encryption-comes-from-renaissance-art-and-math/, https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/scientific-americans-1925-coverage-of-eclipses-mediums-and-inventions/, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/co-surged-last-year-but-the-trump-administration-has-downplayed-the-alarming/