On February 12, U.S. President Donald Trump reversed a major climate change law that stated pollution endangers human health and the environment, making it much harder to control the dangerous pollution heating the planet.
The U.S. government agency that is responsible for protecting the environment is called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 2007, the EPA had the right to make rules about dangerous greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane. They had this power because of the Clean Air Act, a law passed by Congress. The EPA made a decision called the “endangerment finding” in 2009, which stated that the pollution leading to global warming was dangerous.
This decision was important in trying to fight climate change. The EPA was allowed to create rules to lower pollution from cars, trucks, factories, and power plants. On February 12, Trump reversed the 2009 decision and took away the EPA’s power to create rules on the issue of climate.
Trump has claimed many times that climate change is a “hoax,” and having a president saying that makes it much harder to fight against global warming. Trump has also taken the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, a treaty that aims to limit global warming and requires countries to submit reduction plans every five years.
The world is getting hotter, mainly because of the use of fossil fuels like burning coal, oil, and natural gas to make energy. Trump has also lowered protection for these natural resources; he has cut climate science programs and pulled the U.S. out of important international climate agreements.
Isla Holladay, a Freshman at Skyline, said, “If he cares more about war and bombs than the state of our entire planet, then he’s unable to think about things in the long term, and it could be very devastating to the climate.” This is in reference to the war that’s going on between the U.S. and Iran.
Trump has also recently gotten involved in trying to save the Great Salt Lake, but the reversal of this law implies the exact opposite.
Adalayde Scott, a Senior at Skyline who had made significant efforts to conserve the local environment, agreed to this saying, “I think it’s interesting actually, because a lot of people in the state of Utah especially are really championing Trump as this great climate advocate, because he said he’s going to save the Great Salt Lake. And I think that the reversal of this law goes to show that he doesn’t actually care about our climate, contrary to what a lot of people are thinking right now.”
Since the start of Trump’s presidency, he has been pushing for more use of fossil fuels. His administration has also moved to maximize oil and gas production in Alaska. This reverses the Biden era restrictions on the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and reopens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling.
“This reversal of the law allows large corporations to continue burning fossil fuels with no regulations, and the corporations are the problem not the people, so we’re just going to see exacerbation from this,” Scott said. “He wants it for economic reasons and his own business interest, and for other billionaires, rather than in the interest of the people he’s supposed to represent.”
The climate problem is crucial, and due to the law, Americans have recently started to limit water consumption in a state of water bankruptcy.
Holladay said, “People have certainly made progress in recent years with this new law, and I think that it could slow things and even reverse them… I just really wish he could understand what climate change actually is and what it is doing to the planet.”
It is hard to make people care about global warming when there’s this big figure showing he does not really care. “I think Trump as a national authority is setting a precedent that it’s okay to not care about climate change and that it’s okay to continue to prioritize business in the economy over people, even though in the long term clean energy and the green transition are gonna be better for the economy,” Scott said.
Holladay said, “I think with this law reversal it will make it a lot more difficult to reverse climate change, and time is running out. It’s an exponential growth; the less attention we give it, the harder it will become to solve the problem.”
