Arson On a Planetary Scale

The new push to overturn greenhouse gas limits and yet again reject science is criminal and profoundly reckless

(Photo by Jen Osborne/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Arson: The criminal act of deliberately setting fire to property.

Temperatures are climbing. Oceans are rising. Wildfires and hurricanes are becoming more intense and frequent. Drought, too, is endangering lives and livelihoods.

These are facts, each an alarming illustration of our fragile, interconnected ecosystem under attack. We’ve all witnessed, if not experienced, the reality of extreme weather events.

In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a damning assessment of the threat to human life posed by greenhouse gases. Here’s what the EPA found and its administrator signed under the Clean Air Act:

Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), nitrous oxide (N₂O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF₆)—in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.

Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens public health and welfare.

This finding—based on decades of climate science research—provided the foundation for climate policy of both the Obama and Biden administrations to strictly limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants and other industrial sources of pollution, as well as pursue climate-related adaptations such as employing hear-resilient materials and building seawalls. Of course, the fossil fuel industry and its allies have fought against the restrictions, largely unsuccessfully.

Until now. This week Lee Zeldin, Trump’s EPA administrator, announced that the agency is seeking to revoke the endangerment finding. This fox in the henhouse gleefully noted that the proposed revocation, “if finalized [would] amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States“ by erasing the limits on greenhouse gases.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump regime’s Department of Energy released a report on Tuesday trotting out claims that the widely held views of climate scientists are too dire and miss all the wonderful advantages of a warming planet. One climate scientist from Berkeley Earth described this new report as “a scattershot collection of oft-debunked skeptic claims.”

This report arrives in the wake of the regime’s removal of hundreds of scientists and experts who were studying and summarizing the impacts of climate change, including how rising temperatures affect everything from public health and agriculture to water supplies, transportation and energy production.

My friend and former colleague Dave White, one of the leaders of Arizona State University’s Global Futures Laboratory, told the New York Times that this “is a coordinated, full-scale attack on the science. This was present in the first Trump administration, but it’s being exacerbated in the second.” He later noted that the 151-page report—written by five climate change skeptics—“isn't a scientific assessment, it’s a political stunt dressed in the language of research.”

While there are electric utilities and other energy companies that oppose overturning the endangerment finding and support “sensible regulatory reform,” recall Trump’s appallingly corrupt pitch to fossil fuel execs before the election: For a billion dollars to help get him elected, he promised lucrative tax and regulatory reforms.

Now he’s delivering. So what if it means more heat-related deaths, more climate-related disasters, more massive wildfires that endanger communities and people across America and around the world? After all, Trump repeatedly and foolishly asserts climate change is a hoax.

It’s hard to overstate the scale of recklessness involved in cutting limits on greenhouse gas emissions. This is criminal. And if he and his regime are able to successfully fend off resulting lawsuits and overturn this bulwark to confront our climate crisis, we’ll all pay for this hostile rejection of reality.

When I wrote “The Instincts of an Arsonist” the week before the inauguration, I didn’t know how many chances Trump would have to relish a burning world. Unfortunately, what I recognized then has only become more resonant and extreme:

He delights in seeing things burn. He likes destruction. Fixing things is hard; destroying them is much easier.

Finding solutions requires tapping into factual reality. It demands expertise, interest, a desire to learn, a hunger to make things better.

But when you don’t care about the rules others have created, you’re free to strike the match, then sit back and watch what happens.

An arsonist in government should be a contradiction and an impossibility. One would think to be in government, you have to care about governance. You have to believe in using the available resources to create stability, security and improvements that actually help people.

Such an effort takes time. It can be a long slog.

But arsonists are in a hurry to see the consequences of their efforts. So much damage. Who said destruction isn’t where the action is?

In little more than six months, this Arsonist-in-Chief has made us all less safe. With this latest plan for destruction, the health of our whole planet is facing growing danger. Climate experts and everyone who cares about the well-being of our towns and cities and the survival of the human species have one more crucial reason to mobilize, speak out and protest.

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