You Can’t Wish the Climate Away

This week, while a tsunami surged across the Pacific and forced evacuations from Japan to California, the Trump administration quietly announced its plan to wipe out the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The proposal? Repeal the “endangerment finding”—a legal foundation that says greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. In other words, deny the reality that’s been guiding federal climate action for nearly two decades.

If this rule is finalized, the federal government will lose its most important tool to limit pollution from cars, trucks, power plants, oil and gas infrastructure—essentially all major sources of climate emissions. That’s not a policy tweak. It’s a total gutting of the Clean Air Act’s role in confronting the climate crisis.

And let’s not kid ourselves. This isn’t about legal interpretation or regulatory streamlining. It’s about power and politics. Trump has promised fossil fuel executives everything they want in exchange for campaign cash. And this is one of the biggest asks on their list—get rid of the rule that allows the government to say pollution is a public health issue.

The message is blunt: polluters can do whatever they want, and the federal government won’t stop them.

Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA administrator, announced the repeal from a truck dealership in Indiana. Not a scientific summit. Not a frontline community. A truck dealership. That tells you who this is for. He claimed the Clean Air Act never gave the agency authority to regulate greenhouse gases—despite the fact that the Supreme Court already settled that question in Massachusetts v. EPA back in 2007. Congress even reinforced it in the Inflation Reduction Act just two years ago.

But they don’t care about the law. They care about undoing Obama. And Biden. And anyone who dared to use the federal government to hold industry accountable.

I’ve spent a lot of time working in communities that are dealing with the consequences of climate inaction. People living near highways, near waste transfer stations, in flood zones—communities that get hit first and hardest, every single time. They’re not reading IPCC reports. They’re living the results. Wildfire smoke in their lungs. Insurance premiums they can’t afford. Flooded basements and destroyed businesses.

So when someone like Zeldin says, with a straight face, that greenhouse gases aren’t dangerous? That we can’t prove regulating them does any good? That the science is too uncertain to justify the cost?

It’s not just dishonest. It’s offensive.

And while all of this is happening, a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck off Russia’s eastern coast. It triggered tsunami alerts across the Pacific—from Japan to Hawaii to Chile. Some areas saw waves as high as 13 feet. Millions of people were evacuated. And while earthquakes trigger tsunamis, climate change is making them worse. Higher sea levels mean the water travels farther inland. Weakening glaciers and warming oceans destabilize the seafloor and increase the risk of landslides. It’s not theoretical—it’s physics.

We’re already past the point of debating whether the climate is changing. We’re living in it. And now, the government is trying to officially pretend it doesn’t exist.

Let’s be real about the legal strategy here. They’re not trying to chip away at climate policy piece by piece. They’re trying to wipe it out at the root. If they succeed in repealing the endangerment finding, there will be no legal basis to regulate carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act. And it won’t just affect this administration. It’ll handcuff any future president who wants to do something about the climate crisis.

This is coordinated, it’s ideological, and it’s dangerous.

And it’s not just about climate. It’s about how power works in this country. This is what it looks like when one administration uses the government to serve a handful of donors at the expense of everyone else.

This week’s tsunami wasn’t a coincidence. It was a preview. The cost of climate inaction doesn’t show up all at once—it arrives in waves. And when the government abandons its duty to respond, those waves hit harder, reach farther, and leave more people behind.

We’re going to fight this. Environmental groups will take it to court. States will step in. But make no mistake—every time the EPA weakens itself, it becomes harder to rebuild what’s been lost.

And the damage doesn’t wait for a legal ruling.