The Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which serves as the legal basis for the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Join advocates from across the country in urging EPA to maintain the Endangerment Finding and rescind its proposed repeal.
Here is our message to the EPA!
Dear Administrator Lee Zeldin,
We, the undersigned, are writing to strongly condemn the EPA's proposal to roll back the Endangerment Finding. Despite overwhelming evidence supporting the impacts of greenhouse gases, like CO2 and methane, on the climate from the EPA's own extensive body of research over decades, nonsensically this Administration has decided to ignore science and erase facts to serve a political agenda. When coupled the Trump Administration's moves to dismantle FEMA, disincentivize clean energy, and fire staff from federal agencies, EPA's negligence, and its willingness to relinquish its duty to protect Americans health and wellbeing, will jeopardize the lives of Americans across the country, now and in the near future.
The climate crisis is unraveling: just last week, thawing ice from Alaska's Mendenhall Glacier lake caused such significant flooding that Juneau residents were ordered to evacuate. In 2023, after similar flooding destroyed property and caused the city to declare a state of emergency, scientists from NOAA assessed that the flooding would not have occurred without climate change. Other government data affirms this conclusion: the Alaska Department of Geological and Geophysical Surveys has found that Alaskan glaciers have been declining since the late 1980s. From the now-yearly Canadian wildfire haze that overtakes the U.S., to Hurricane Helene's catastrophic and unprecedented flash flooding, we are now living through the climate crisis.
Already, these climate catastrophes come with extraordinary costs to the health and wealth of the average citizen, but most especially to the nation's vulnerable. Wildfires release a myriad of pollutants into the environment, causing debilitating illnesses affecting survivors and first responders. A recent study published in the medical journal JAMA found that 440 more deaths could be attributed to the fires than the 31 who perished directly due to the flames. The study authors estimated that the deaths were caused by poor air quality which may have exacerbated heart and lung conditions, and the disruptions caused by the fires likely led to delayed medical care. Similarly, increasing temperatures have created more habitable conditions for disease-bearing insects, like ticks and mosquitos. As the Trump Administration continues cutting funding for government services, public health will become increasingly precarious, and the EPA would be shirking its own responsibility to fight against its own research predicting these impacts all in service of a political agenda.
In rolling back the Endangerment Finding, the EPA is not only abandoning its core mission of protecting human health in the environment, but will also willfully relinquish its own authority to combat the one of the biggest national security threats Americans face: the climate crisis. By explicitly abandoning its own stated missions of reducing scientifically-supported environmental risks, and by choosing to deprive the public of accurate information that would enable them to safeguard their own well-being, the EPA turns its back on the American people, leaving them to contend with worsening environmental degradation.
In conclusion, we strongly condemn the proposed recission of the EPA's Endangerment Finding. Doing so explicitly contradicts decades of rigorous scientific research and the lived experience of Americans across the country who are already suffering from the climate crisis. Repealing the Endangerment Finding will jeopardize the lives of Americans now and in both the near and distant future. For these reasons, we strongly urge the EPA to maintain the Endangerment Finding.
Sincerely,
