The U.S. environmental agency rejects that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health

The EPA wants to reverse a landmark 2009 declaration that gave the government power to limit and regulate emissions that cause climate change

The slimming down of the federal government undertaken by the Donald Trump Administration goes hand in hand, in the case of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with scientific denialism, by refuting the numerous evidences that link climate change to human action. This week, its administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced that the EPA plans to rescind a 2009 climate risk statement, adopted by President Barack Obama, that concluded that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. The Democratic administrations of Obama and fellow Democrat Joe Biden relied on that declaration to set strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars, power plants and other industrial sources of pollution. At an event held on Tuesday at a truck dealership in Indianapolis, Zeldin was proud of the repeal, saying that it would stick “a dagger into the heart of the religion of climate change”, one of the clearest manifestations of the woke ideology so persecuted by the Republican administration. The 2009 declaration, which underpinned the government’s legal authority to combat climate change, was seen as a milestone in the fight against global warming. No less consequential is the Republican attempt to end it, since, according to Zeldin, “it would amount to the greatest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” The Republican initiative would also eliminate limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks on the nation’s roads, hence the wink at the truck dealership (and the powerful truckers’ union, many of whom supported Trump in the November election).

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