The Current - The E.P.A. is set to roll back years of climate change policy

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Last week, the  Trump administration announced that the E.P.A. planned to rescind the 2009 declaration, known as the endangerment finding. The proposal would eliminate limits on greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for cars and trucks. Guest host Sean Henry speaks with scientists both in the US and in Canada about the consequences for the fight against climate change.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It's true that for too many years, mankind has been slow to respond or even recognize the magnitude of the climate threat. It is true of my own country as well. But this is a new day. It is a new era. And I'm proud to say that the United States has done more to promote clean energy and reduce carbon pollution in the last eight months than it is. any other time in our history. In 2009, then U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the United Nations on the danger of

climate change and his plan to address it. Last week, 16 years later, the Trump administration made a very different announcement. Yeah, actually later today, we're going to be making a big announcement in Indiana. And something that happened back in the Obama administration in 2009 was that they put forward this regulation called the endangerment finding. What's the significance? How big is the endangerment finding? while repealing it will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America.

So it's kind of a big deal. Lee Zeldin is the new Trump-appointed Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. He was talking on the conservative American podcast, Ruthless, announcing the plan to repeal the greenhouse gas endangerment finding. That's a scientific finding that's been at the heart of the U.S. action to fight climate change. Scientists in both the U.S. and in Canada say the repeal will have major consequences for the fight against climate change. Scott Seleska is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. Good morning.

Good morning, Sean. We'll get to the specifics in a moment, but what do you make of this news from the Trump administration? As we can see all around us, the signs of climate change are upon us, from increased wildfires to heat waves, to droughts, to seemingly more intense storms. And this is just the beginning of what we'll see. see if climate change is not limited and the Trump administration here in the United States is taking a step backward and trying to pull back a whole array of climate change related regulations and policies. So it's very concerning, obviously. You said this is just the beginning. What do you mean by that? I mean, the things that we are seeing in terms of

more intense wildfires, more heat waves, more extreme events in our weather, overall hotter conditions is just the beginning of what we will see if steps are not taken to limit contributions to that problem. And so sometimes you hear people say, well, this is just the new normal. And I respond to that by saying, well, this isn't the new normal. The new normal is going to be worse than this. What is the endangerment finding? Yeah, so this is getting into the details of what's going on legally. In order to place some of these regulations, in particular limits from automobiles back in the early 2000s, the EPA promulgated what is called the endangerment finding,

which is just a legal finding that says that the administrator of the EPA judges that greenhouse gases are air pollutants that contribute to the problem of endangering public health or welfare because of climate change. And what the law says specifically is that the head of the EPA, shall, by regulation, prescribe standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant, which in his judgment cause or contribute to air pollution, which in the key phrases, may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. So once you've made a determination that there's a reasonable anticipation of endangerment, it doesn't require certainty, it doesn't

require absolute proof. It just requires that it's reasonable to be worried that there might be endangerment. And that standard in terms of the science is very clear. It is reasonable to anticipate endangerment. It's much more than just reasonable, but it certainly meets that standard for a regulation. What they're trying to do now is to somehow reverse that finding, which would be impossible to do as a matter of science, more or less. Because reversing it on its merits would mean making the case that it is unreasonable to anticipate that there might be endangerment from climate change. And even whatever level of uncertainty you might think is still associated with climate change and there's uncertainties in the details, even though the big picture is very clear, that doesn't make any sense to say it's unreasonable to anticipate danger from these changes. We're already seeing those changes, so that ship has sailed.

What kind of specific regulations resulted from the endangerment finding? Well, the first one was limits on emissions from automobiles, in particular increases in the standards for mileage standards for cars. And they also then a few years later in 2016 made a similar. endangerment finding for emissions from aircraft. They're in the process now of implementing emission limits on power plants, which is also being proposed for repealed by the Trump administration. So these are all limits that are important. They're an important first step for contributing to these problems. It's just the first step. It's really frustrating that even every time we try to

take a first step like this, there's this reversal. So it's a concern. Why is the EPA proposing to repeal it? What's their rationale? Well, they've said a number of different things, and I don't think they would legally stand up, at least in the old court system in the U.S. I don't know about right now, but one of the things they've said is that it's too uncertain to regulate these. The uncertainty is not significant, or the certainty of the contribution of greenhouse gases is not significant, where they've sort of defined significance in a way that has never been, hasn't been used before. But U.S., say, just from power plant, U.S. contributes about 5% of total global emissions to climate change. And you might say, well, 5% is not that much, but 5% all by itself, at this state,

age would be a significant contribution to causing climate change that would be regulatable if it was all by itself. And so to say that, you know, the U.S. historically has been the single biggest contributor as a country to climate change and to say that somehow emissions from these automobiles or power plants is not significant when it's this, when those are some of the biggest contributors to U.S. air emission of greenhouse gases and the U.S. itself historically is the single biggest nation. If that is not significant, then there is no level that would be significant in no way in which it would be possible to regulate an whole array of air pollution problems.

And this is actually a concern of ours is that that's actually what the goal of this administration is to basically stop as much regulation as possible that is protecting the environment across the board, not just regard, not just with regard to climate change. EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, again, on the ruthless podcast, talked about the cost of the existing regulations under the endangerment finding. Take a listen. I mean, most Americans, we care about the environment. We want clean air, land, and water. Conservatives love the environment. We want to be good stewards of the environment. There are people who then, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country. Lee Zeldon says, repealing the endangerment

finding will save, quote, really is. What do you make of that? I think that's just, that's just misleading hocus pocus. I mean, that economic studies after economic studies show that we can mitigate climate change in a rational, economically rational way. Already, the alternatives from solar to wind to, as a transition, sort of gas-fired systems are cheaper than coal plants. There is no new coal plants being ordered to be built, which is the basis for a lot of greenhouse gas emissions

and the basis for historically most of our electricity generation. The Trump administration is actually putting roadblocks in the way of private industry who wants to build alternative energy power plants. So they're taking steps that are at odds with the claim that this is somehow going to save money. In fact, it's going to be the other way around. If a conservative administration is taking steps to interfere with the private market

that wants to build more of these alternative energy systems, solar, and wind, which are much cheaper these days than coal or nuclear, certainly much cheaper than coal and many of the sources that are contributing to greenhouse gases. Are Americans paying attention? How do they feel about what's happening? There's so many things happening. I think that's a good question, how much there is clearly strong interest, as Lee Zeldon himself referred to in that quote that you just played, Americans want there to be, and I think not just Americans, it's globally, this is a global problem. People want to do something about climate change.

I think we should be doing something about climate change, and we can. And so I hope the concern will, people will see that this is a problem and sort of stand up against these changes, which are anti-science, anti-public interest, anti-economic growth. Scott, thanks for talking to us. My pleasure. Thank you. Scott Seleska is a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. We reached them in Michigan. Okay, so there are millions of podcasts, and maybe you're cool to stick with the ones you already know you like. But if you're just a little paranoid about missing out on the best new stuff, we can help.

Every other Thursday, the Sounds Good newsletter will bring you one must-hear show from CBC podcasts. And because we're true audio nerds, we'll also tell you about shows that we love that we didn't make. Go to cBC.ca.ca slash sounds good to subscribe. Sarah Birch is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo, a Canada research chair in sustainability, governance and innovation, and the executive director of the Waterloo Climate Institute. She also works with the IPCC, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sarah, hello. Hello, good morning. You're a climate scientist here in Canada.

How are you feeling about this news? I have mixed feelings, of course. I mean, I think that this is sort of a blatant disregard of incredibly abundant science and honestly common sense. Canada is in a slightly different boat, I guess, certainly. We are making some progress reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we are moving much too slowly as well. So, you know, we've seen that Canada is last among the G7 in its progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. we're just not moving quickly enough. And we're the only country in that group whose emissions have actually gone up since 1990 instead of going down. They've come down since 2005, and that's really, really important progress. And they're, you know, slowly inching down each year.

But we've committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, you know, to between 40 and 45 percent by 2030. And we're moving too slowly to reach that goal at this point. Why does it matter to Canada if the U.S. does this? Well, we feel the impacts of climate change here in Canada. You know, 10 or 15 years ago, we used to talk about this as something that might unfold, you know, 50 years from now or 100 years from now or in places far, far away. And as we see this summer and the last several summers, the impacts of climate change are already unfolding now in Canada. You know, for instance, you can recall the distant past of 2024 when the raging forest fires and other climate change. impacts cost more than $8 billion in insured losses.

That was triple the year before and 12 times what we paid in the sort of average decade prior to that. So the costs of climate change are escalating astronomically. And we have to be part of a collective dealing with that. We can't just reduce our emissions here in Canada and expect the impacts to decline. We have to get on board together. You worked on the IPCC's latest climate change report. What did that assessment tell us? Well, it was a mixed bag.

There were some not-so-great findings and some more positive signals. So on the not-so-great side, the IPCC found that we are not on track to reducing our emissions at the pace and scale. We'd need to limit warming to 1.5 or even 2 degrees above those pre-industrial average temperatures. and that's our goal. We want to manage warming, limit warming to that level so that we don't enter sort of a deeply uncertain and heavily impacted world. So we're not on track. We're not moving fast enough. So what's causing us to not move fast enough? Well, in Canada, there's a couple of different answers to that question. One is, of course, that we have an enormous oil and gas industry that's responsible for about a quarter of our emissions here in Canada. And those emissions from

that sector have typically gone up and that sector has grown. They've ever so slightly come down in the last couple of years. Our population is also growing here, this sort of thing. So those are some of the main reasons. But the positive side of the IPCC findings, which are so important to keep in mind, is that we now have the solutions to climate change, the solutions to greenhouse gas emissions in every sector, in every climate. And some countries actually are reducing their emissions fast enough.

So we have pathways to follow. We're not inventing our way out of this as we go. Without the U.S., how effective will efforts from Canada and the rest of the world be when it comes to preventing the world from reaching that 1.5 degrees Celsius limit? Well, it's unavoidable that the United States is an important part of the equation globally when we're collectively trying to ratchet down our emissions quickly. But I would say that, you know, the renewable energy transition is already underway. It's underway in the United States. It's underway globally. You know, China installed more renewable energy capacity last year than the rest of the world combined. So that process is already underway. The markets are reflecting that. Renewable energy is cheaper in many places now than fossil fuels. So I don't believe that this will halt efforts at all to address climate change. It's an added challenge. certainly. It makes the efforts of the rest of us even more important. But more importantly, I think here in Canada, we need to choose solutions to climate change that tackle multiple problems simultaneously. We can use it as an opportunity. We also are facing a biodiversity crisis.

We want to improve public health. And things like nature-based solutions, bringing nature back into cities, using wetlands to cushion us from floods instead of just building a giant wall. You know, these sorts of solutions can actually, you know, help us with biodiversity, help us with physical health, make our communities more beautiful. And we want those things. So I think we can do those with or without the United States. How is the global community reacting to this decision by the U.S.? Well, this is somewhat ironic because I was just working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a week and a half ago, during which a really landmark decision came down from the international core. of justice, the ICJ, saying that countries needed to make every available effort to address climate change, that it is our responsibility to do that.

The global community is largely in agreement that climate change is a clear and present danger, that collaboration is required to deal with it. And so I think, you know, I think the United States is pulling against a really important global consensus in that regard. Where do you find hope right now that real progress can still be made in the fight against climate change? I see enormous hope, honestly. I'm surrounded. I get the privilege of working on this day and day out, and sometimes it's pretty grim, but most of the time, actually, what I see is hundreds, if not thousands of communities around the world taking climate change incredibly

seriously and making their communities better as a result. So everything from small, small efforts to build cycling infrastructure to create community gardens that enhance food security. I'm seeing investments in public transit. I'm seeing just a higher level of discourse, you know, more sophisticated understanding of what's happening and how important it is for Canadians and folks around the world to deal with it. So while we're not moving fast enough, I see evidence that, you know, deep seeds have been planted to make really positive change. How do we get more Canadians to see the urgency? Well, I think the urgency is all around us. It's hard to, it's hard to avoid, honestly, in summers like this on the ones past.

My sense is actually that Canadians understand the urgency. They just don't. They're struggling to envision what their communities could or should look like. And that's the conversation we're not having. I think we're having a lot of conversations about extreme events and cataclysmic losses. But I'd like to have a conversation about what we want our communities to look like and feel like and smell like in the future. And how do you have those conversations? What needs to be said to get that kind of understanding? Well, this is, you know, each community will look different if it's following a, you know, more sustainable development pathway and that's good. We need diversity across our communities and how they respond to climate change. But I think that this is a very place-based community-focused conversation.

This can be led by all different folks from small businesses to nonprofits to municipal government talking about how we want to improve public health, for instance, by enhancing our public transit and our active transport infrastructure and also reducing emissions at the same time, how we bring nature into our cities so that we have food for us to make us more food secure. while also sinking carbon and also enhancing biodiversity. So we have these solutions that can deliver, you know, multiple benefits at the same time. And it's, you know, really up to communities with the support of higher levels of government to drive those solutions forward. Sarah Birch, thanks for talking to us this morning.

Thanks so much. I appreciate it. Sarah Birch is a professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of Waterloo, a Canada Research Chair in Sustainability, Governance and Innovation. and the Executive Director of the Waterloo Climate Institute. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

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