"Sometimes the forces that lead to major social and political change take years to mature before they become public policy. The environmental movement, for example, began well before the first Earth Day in 1970; after decades of advocacy and resistance, the U.S. government finally passed laws regulating the practices and substances poisoning the planet. Now all that progress has been reversed at the hands of the Trump administration."
"President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government's legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. The action is a key step in removing limits on carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases that scientists say are supercharging heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather."
"The so-called endangerment finding, first promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2009, represented the culmination of scientific and regulatory initiatives dating back to the Nixon presidency. Until Trump's takeover of the Republican Party, climate-change "denialism" was a fringe movement. While many Republicans questioned the pace and scope of climate-change regulation, they didn't oppose it entirely. But now climate-change denialism is official U.S. policy, making this country a global pariah."
The Trump administration rescinded the EPA's 2009 endangerment finding, removing the federal legal basis to regulate carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases. The rollback eliminates limits tied to rising heat waves, droughts, wildfires and other extreme weather. The endangerment finding had built on decades of scientific and regulatory initiatives dating back to the Nixon administration. Climate-change denialism moved from a fringe position into official U.S. policy, reversing earlier Republican hesitation that questioned pace but did not wholly reject regulation. The United States withdrew from the 2015 Paris Agreement and now stands with nations that reject global greenhouse-gas commitments.
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