School-age children carrying signs reading “less pollution, more solution” and “people over polluters” gathered on Wednesday inside the U.S. Capitol to oppose the Trump administration’s plan to roll back greenhouse gas regulations.
Congressional leaders and climate advocates joined the youth at the press conference, where they denounced the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to reconsider the landmark 2009 endangerment finding, the backbone of emissions regulation.
The backdrop of young faces underscored a point lawmakers and experts repeated throughout the event: that the debate is not just over statutory interpretation, science or judicial precedent. Repeal of the endangerment finding stands to fundamentally reshape the lives of young people, who will bear the brunt of climate change.
“Kids want the EPA to preserve the endangerment finding to protect our health and future,” said 12-year-old Valencia, who lives in Maryland. “Our generation is expected to live through three times as many climate disasters as our grandparents, and we’re already living through them.”
Holding aloft hand-drawn posters with messages like “climate change makes camp unsafe,” the kids described how environmental issues were already constraining the fun of their childhood. “My swim practices have gotten canceled because of wildfire smoke and recess gets moved inside when it’s too hot outside,” Margot, a 10-year-old from Virginia, told the crowd. “It’s really scary.”
Several lawmakers present reflected on their own childhoods, before pollution was reined in by the environmental policies now in the administration’s crosshairs. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) recalled “feeling that burning sensation in your eyes or in your throat because air quality was so bad.” He recounted how, growing up in Los Angeles in the 1970s, children had to stay home from school and avoid playing outdoors because of air pollution levels. “If you truly don’t believe in the power of cleaner vehicle standards, then think about these kids,” Padilla said.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) grounded the fight in history. His state argued, in Massachusetts v. EPA nearly two decades ago, that greenhouse gases were air pollutants and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court agreed in its 2007 ruling, which compelled the EPA to determine, based on scientific evidence, whether emissions posed a serious threat to public health. The EPA determined at that time that the evidence was clear, and formalized the endangerment finding in 2009. It vested the agency with the authority—and the legal obligation—to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“The EPA couldn’t disapprove and deny the connection between greenhouse gases and climate change then, and they can’t now,” Markey told the audience. “We have the facts on our side—Trump’s EPA is pushing its own fictions.”
Markey’s comments were backed up the same day by a publication from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that will be submitted to the EPA. Authors of the new report from the nation’s premier group of scientific advisers reviewed the wealth of studies amassed by the scientific community since the endangerment finding was released, concluding that the evidence that emissions endanger human health is “beyond scientific dispute” and “has only grown stronger.”
“Much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved and new threats have been identified,” the report said, drawing on some 600 studies published in the past 16 years. Those newly identified threats include climate change’s impact on metabolic disease, antimicrobial resistance, immune health, nutrition, mental health, pregnancy and birth outcomes, the scientists wrote. “The United States faces a future in which climate-induced harm continues to worsen and today’s extremes become tomorrow’s norms,” their report said.
The National Academies report is one of the more important documents to emerge in the brief public comment period that the EPA provided. That’s because Congress spelled out, in the Clean Air Act, that the agency should draw on the findings, recommendations and comments of the private, nonprofit institution, which operates under a 1863 congressional charter, signed by President Abraham Lincoln. Typically, the Academies write reports in response to requests from Congress or administrations, but in this case, no such request was made. The organization decided to self-fund a rapid response review of the science, completing it in just over 40 days.
Markey likened Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA head, to the mayor in the 1975 film “Jaws,” who keeps the town’s lucrative beaches open for swimming despite evidence of shark attacks and warnings from experts. “He’s trying to tell the American people, it’s all clear to get back in the water. Nothing to see here, folks. No danger from climate change. No laws that require him to fight pollution. No court precedent that demands the agency he leads must keep us safe.”
“We know that people are not safe; there’s blood in the water and more fossil fuel sharks than ever,” Markey added. “This attack on the endangerment finding is a clear and present danger to the public.”
In the 16 years since the endangerment finding, it was challenged numerous times by industry groups and their allies, but courts consistently upheld the EPA’s finding as “unambiguously correct.” Now, the Trump administration is moving to overturn years of precedent in just a few months.
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Donate NowSen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said the EPA’s decision was the result of infiltration by the fossil fuel industry. Whitehouse described how the parasitoid wasp injects other bugs with its larva, which then controls the victim insect from the inside. “The Trump EPA is the bug and the fossil fuel larvae are in there, driving all of its decisions,” Whitehouse said.
Whitehouse announced an investigation Tuesday into whether the EPA’s decision had been shaped by industry groups. “I am concerned about the role that fossil fuel companies, certain manufacturers, trade associations, polluter-backed groups and others with much to benefit from the repeal of the endangerment finding … played in drafting, preparing, promoting, and lobbying on the proposal,” Whitehouse wrote in a formal request for documents from 24 companies and organizations.
Zeldin announced the plan to rescind the Endangerment Finding on July 29, promising to “end $1 trillion or more in hidden taxes on American businesses and families.” If successful, the move could repeal all emissions standards for vehicles and end the reporting programs that track emissions data.
The announcement provoked immediate and significant public backlash.
During the first day of public hearings on the EPA’s proposal, Inside Climate News counted only 10 people who testified in support out of roughly 200 speakers. The overwhelming majority expressed deep concern over the decision’s potential consequences to human health, environment and industry.
The EPA extended the deadline for public input until Sept. 22, and the agency’s docket has now drawn more than 100,000 comments. Federal law requires that the EPA respond to significant comments before issuing any rule and incorporate the substance of those comments into the final regulation.
If the public fails to shift the EPA’s course, litigation will become inevitable, according to Kathleen Rogers, president of environmental advocacy group EarthDay.org. “If the endangerment finding is overturned, all the environmental groups will come together in bringing a case against the EPA,” Rogers, a former judicial clerk, told ICN. “It’ll go to the Supreme Court either way.” The National Academies report undoubtedly will be used as evidence in the legal challenges.
Rogers said the EPA would ultimately be asking the Supreme Court to overturn its own precedent. However, Rogers said it was “concerning” that three of the justices who, in 2007, wrote dissenting opinions in Massachusetts v. EPA—Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—are still on the court today. “The Supreme Court ruling against itself isn’t that unprecedented anymore,” Rogers said. “Presidential power has become everything.”
“If the endangerment finding is overturned, all the environmental groups will come together in bringing a case against the EPA.” Rogers, a former judicial clerk,
— Kathleen Rogers, EarthDay.org
The Trump administration based its justification for dismantling the endangerment finding on a U.S. Department of Energy report that downplayed the danger of climate change and argued that mitigating its effects could be more harmful than helpful. The report, which was widely discredited and dismissed by the scientific community—was penned by the administration’s since-disbanded Climate Working Group, composed of five prominent skeptics of the scientific consensus on climate change.
The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists filed a lawsuit accusing the Climate Working Group of violating the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which mandates transparency and balanced consideration from such bodies. President Trump insisted the group was exempt from those rules, but on Wednesday, a federal court rejected that argument.
“This Court rules that the Climate Working Group was not assembled to ‘exchange facts or information’ in a manner that would bring it into the claimed exception,” the order read, opening the path for the legal challenge to advance.
Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) highlighted Wednesday how long environmental regulation had enjoyed bipartisan support. “I’m here to praise Richard Nixon for creating the EPA and the Clean Air Act. I’m here to praise Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, whose leadership recognized that global pollution demands global solutions,” Casten said, adding that Zeldin had a duty to administer the policies established by the courts and Congress.
“If he doesn’t do that, he’s breaking the law. He’s breaking his oath, and he is putting every one of us in jeopardy,” Casten added.
Reese Wilkerson, a 15-year-old from Maryland, was among the last to speak before the group of children and advocates left to visit the EPA, where they delivered hundreds of letters, from people across the country, opposing the agency’s regulatory rollback. “To every adult listening today, who cares about children now and who cares about our lives in the future, we are asking you to please protect the endangerment finding—and our future.”
Inside Climate News reporter Marianne Lavelle contributed reporting.
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Carl David Goette-Luciak
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CD Goette-Luciak is an investigative reporter and a fellow at Inside Climate News. He has written for The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, The Guardian, Vox and NPR. He was an Investigative Reporting Fellow for the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University and a recipient of the Ferriss-UC Berkeley Journalism Fellowship. He also received an Overseas Press Club Foundation Fellowship to report for the Los Angeles Times from Mexico. Fluent in English, Spanish and German, he has covered stories in every country in the Americas, reporting on democracy, migration, climate change, human rights, organized crime and corruption. He previously reported for the Miami Herald, the Latin America Advisor and Radio La Ciudadana. He received a Master’s in Public Policy and a B.A. in Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia, where he was a Jefferson Scholar.
