What’s next after the Trump administration revokes key finding on climate change?

Following three of the warmest years on record, as scientists reckon with climate tipping points and states and cities grapple with the escalating cost of extreme weather and more intense wildfires, the Trump administration this week is expected to formally eliminate the US government’s role in controlling greenhouse gas pollution. By revoking its 17-year-old scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, the Environmental Protection Agency will demolish the legal underpinning of its authority to act on climate change under the Clean Air Act. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will be alongside President Donald Trump for an event Wednesday focused on boosting US use of coal, as mercury and air toxics standards are repealed. That is expected to be a prelude to Zeldin finalizing the endangerment finding repeal, an assignment the president handed him in an executive order signed on the first day of his second term in office. “President Trump will be taking the most significant deregulatory actions in history to further unleash American energy dominance and drive down costs,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday. The move marks a far more radical retreat on climate change compared to the steps to weaken regulations that were taken in Trump’s first term. Instead, Zeldin’s team has asserted that the EPA never had the power to write such rules to begin with. Climate action advocates and Democrat-led states have vowed to challenge the repeal of the endangerment finding, a decision that not only erases President Joe Biden’s most important climate regulations, but is designed to make it more difficult for any future administration to rein in fossil fuel pollution from vehicles, power plants, or other industries. “Communities across the country will bear the brunt of this decision—through dirtier air, higher health costs, and increased climate harm,” said Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees, in a statement. “The Trump EPA is surrendering its responsibility, turning its back on families and communities already facing the highest pollution and health risks, and dismantling decades of science and progress.”