How Trump’s administration seeks to limit future governments from tackling climate change

Over the past four presidencies, the United States has repeatedly shifted its position on the Paris climate agreement—alternating between joining and withdrawing. But in his second term, President Donald Trump isn’t merely questioning climate science; his administration is actively working to dismantle the federal government’s ability to respond to climate change at all.

These efforts go far beyond Trump’s familiar opposition to renewable energy and his push for more oil drilling, as put forward by a recent CNN article. Despite the US already being the world’s top oil producer, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this week announced a plan to revoke the "endangerment finding"—a foundational declaration made in 2009 that greenhouse gas emissions threaten human health. 

As the paper points out, eliminating this finding would strip the EPA of its authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act, undermining nearly all climate-related regulations. It’s a sweeping move—one of many. Other actions include:

-Reversing previous efforts to move away from coal. Trump has signed executive orders to support the coal industry and directed the EPA to lift limits on pollution from coal and gas plants.

-Ending federal tax credits for electric vehicles, which had survived during Trump’s first term and were later expanded under President Joe Biden. Republicans now plan to terminate them as early as next month.

-Dismantling Biden-era incentives that promoted renewable energy projects—ironically driving up electricity costs.

-Stripping California of its authority to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035, through legislation passed by Trump and congressional Republicans.

-Preparing to overturn federal tailpipe emissions standards set by Biden’s EPA, while also targeting California’s ability to set its own emissions rules.

-Firing the authors of the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated climate report, and scrubbing past versions from federal websites.

-Declining to participate in a major international climate summit later this year in Brazil, forgoing any leadership role in global climate talks.

-Cutting federal staff focused on climate policy and science.

While all of the above are already cause for concern, the article warns that the attempt to undo the endangerment finding that may prove the most consequential. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former congressman with no significant environmental background and a strong loyalty to Trump—called it the “largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.” 

To climate skeptics, that’s a cause for celebration. To others, it’s alarming. Zeldin has openly framed his mission not as environmental protection but as freeing businesses from regulation. 

The justification for the EPA's move is a climate report commissioned by the administration and authored by five known climate skeptics. Titled " Titled "A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate" and published on July 23, it was commissioned by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who generated his wealth in the fracking industry.

In the report’s preface, Wright concedes that climate change is real but downplays its urgency: “It is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty.” In other words, he argues that cutting emissions may do more harm than good—an outlier view in the scientific community.

Mainstream science, including reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), presents overwhelming peer-reviewed evidence of the dangers posed by unchecked emissions. The Trump administration has barred US government scientists from contributing to the next IPCC report, due in 2029.

Climate impacts are already visible

Katie Dykes, commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the effects of climate change are no longer theoretical.

“The impacts have become part of everyday life,” Dykes explained. “They’re happening faster and more severely than scientists predicted.”

By declaring that greenhouse gas emissions are not a danger to human health, the administration is essentially shifting the burden of climate change onto local governments and communities.

“This is abandoning our residents to bear the full cost of climate change—health risks, infrastructure damage, and increasingly extreme weather,” Dykes said, noting rising threats like heatwaves, drought, wildfires, and flooding.

Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University, dismissed the EPA’s new climate report as a legal argument—not a scientific one.

“The goal is not to evaluate the evidence fairly, but to make the strongest possible case for carbon dioxide’s innocence,” he said. “That’s not science.”

Phil Duffy, chief scientist at Spark Climate Solutions, warned that the move could reverse decades of public health gains. “Tens of thousands of Americans die each year from particulate pollution. That number has dropped as we’ve moved away from coal—but the Trump administration is set to reverse that trend.”

Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, described the situation in stark terms: “Not since Stalin’s Soviet Union and Lysenkoism have we seen such an overt effort to distort science for ideological ends,” referring to disastrous effects that the Moscow administration’s political interference in the scientific process had across the Union.

By Nazrin Sadigova