By Arianna Skibell, Politico Power Switch
The Trump administration’s plan for unwinding U.S. climate policy may hinge on the idea that climate change is bad — just not bad enough to justify the cost of curbing it.
This approach, analysts say, might allow President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency to neuter climate regulations for cars and power plants without undertaking the arduous task of discrediting the overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gases are driving up global temperatures, writes Jean Chemnick.
EPA’s decision on how exactly to unravel the federal government’s fight against global warming could be one of the most crucial pivot points of Trump’s second term — helping determine how much of the anti-climate crusade survives in court. And as Jean writes, “Hints about its strategy may have been hiding in plain sight.”
Administrator Lee Zeldin offered one clue in a recent press release describing his plan to challenge a 2009 action known as the endangerment finding, which states that carbon pollution endangers public health. The finding serves as the justification for most U.S. climate rules.
By emphasizing how much money it costs industry to curb atmospheric pollution, EPA could essentially use a little math magic to argue that the environmental benefits of climate rules are minimal. The agency may also seek to incorporate potential benefits from warmer temperatures.
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