In one sweeping move, President Donald Trump on Thursday erased the scientific and legal foundation of America’s clean air protections and modern climate policies. For the first time in a generation, the U.S. government no longer officially recognizes carbon pollution as a danger to public health.
Black people are exposed to more pollution, on average, than every other racial and ethnic group in the U.S. and are the most likely to die prematurely because of it.
In 2009, President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency declared exactly this — what scientists had been saying for decades — that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases harm the health of Americans. Since then, the ruling has served as the legal underpinning for nearly every federal action to clean up America’s air.
By striking down the ruling, known by environmentalists as the “endangerment finding,” the government is pulling the last legal thread limiting pollution. Without this legal protection, Black neighborhoods are exposed to even greater risks with no federal shield left against the smoke, heat, and storms.
“Like most actions within this administration, this decision lacks any regard for everyday people and seems to be a play to deepen its loyalty to fossil fuel companies and billionaires who have proven that they are willing to take actions that endanger human life,” NAACP Director of Environmental and Climate Justice Abre’ Conner said Thursday.
This will “leave Black and other frontline communities in a uniquely tenuous situation,” she said. She added that the action will not “silence the people, the scientists, and the advocates who have made it clear that we are indeed in a climate crisis.”
The EPA will now seek to erase limits on pollution from cars, power plants, and other industries that release the majority of the nation’s planet-warming pollution.
At an event at the White House on Thursday, alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Trump called the decision “the single largest deregulatory action in American history.”
Zeldin said the rollback will save businesses over $1 trillion that would have been spent on upgrading technology and reducing industrial emissions.
Environmental and health experts are clear: The fossil fuel pollution heating the planet is also killing people in real time — and Black communities are bearing the worst of it.
A coalition of over half a dozen national environmental groups has vowed to sue the government over this move. The lawsuits will likely reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where a conservative majority known to back Trump’s environmental rollbacks will decide over the ruling’s fate.
“This is a dark day for science and health. Climate change harms health – period,” said Harold Wimmer, president of the American Lung Association, one of the groups challenging the rollback.
Rising greenhouse gas emissions are driving more deadly heat waves and storm damage from hurricanes and floods. Black residents are more likely to live in urban heat islands that can be up to 22 degrees hotter than surrounding areas and they are most likely to live in floodzones.
And that’s on top of the day-to-day toll of air pollution from power plants, refineries, and highways, which still drive disproportionate premature deaths, heart and lung disease, and economic losses in Black neighborhoods even as overall air quality has improved.
“Trump and EPA administrator Zeldin are giving polluters a free pass to pollute,” said former EPA scientist Matthew Davis.
The decision comes just weeks after the EPA announced it will no longer count premature deaths or other health effects from air pollution in rulemakings, instead only counting the economic costs companies incur to make their businesses cleaner.