More greenhouse gas emissions again? If the Trump administration has its way: no problem.Image: Shutterstock
The US government under Trump wants to invalidate the scientific evidence that greenhouse gases are harmful to health. There is a clear plan behind this.
Feb 13, 2026, 6:12 p.mFeb 13, 2026, 6:12 p.m
On Thursday, the Trump administration announced its next radical step toward overhauling the entire U.S. government. But this time it affects the whole world. The USA under Trump wants reverse a so-called “endangerment finding”.
Very few people have probably ever heard of it before. But the risk assessment is central to environmental policy regulations in the USA – and ultimately also to the progression of climate change.
What it’s about and what’s at stake now.
What is it about?
Essentially, it’s about this so-called risk assessment by the US Environmental Protection Agency. It was introduced in 2009 under Barack Obama and gives the government the power to regulate to combat climate change.
The risk assessment itself simply states that carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases harm human health – today and in the future. This is crucial because legislation between 1970 (when the so-called Clean Air Act came into force) and 2009 required the government to regulate certain air pollutants that caused, for example, smog. But greenhouse gases were not included back then.
The 2009 hazard assessment now also linked greenhouse gases to human health: the gases store heat in the earth’s atmosphere, which exposes human health to a number of risks. This corresponds to the great scientific consensus today. Warming of the atmosphere leads to more severe weather events such as hurricanes or heat waves, which in turn can lead to death or injury. It also increases the spread of dangerous diseases such as Lyme disease.
What has the Trump administration announced?
On Thursday (February 12), US President Trump announced together with the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin:
«It couldn’t be any bigger. We are officially repealing the so-called ‘endangerment determination,’ a disastrous Obama-era policy.”
Donald Trump
Zeldin described this step as “the largest deregulation measure in the history of the United States.” He accused Democrats of launching an “ideological crusade” against climate change that had “strangulated entire sectors of the US economy,” particularly the automotive industry.
Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin.Image: keystone
With this decision, the government essentially releases itself from the obligation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in its own country and to enact effective laws. Specifically, the Clean Air Act of 1970 only allows the government to limit pollution that causes direct harm to the people of the country, and then only in cases in which the damage occurs “near the source” of the environmental pollution. This does not include greenhouse gases, as the damage in their case occurs indirectly.
How does the Trump administration justify the decision?
Donald Trump has always been considered a “climate skeptic”. For him, man-made climate change is a “hoax”. For Trump and his cabinet, climate change is not a problem that the state should solve – on the contrary: under him as president, the USA should produce more oil, gas and coal. Environmental protection regulations, the argument goes, are expensive and unnecessary.
Lee Zeldin claimed that previous Democratic governments had used the endangerment assessment to justify regulations on fossil fuel industries worth “trillions of dollars”. The withdrawal of these regulations would therefore help to boost the US economy. Zeldin made an acrobatic about-face under Trump: As a congressman, he advocated for cross-party solutions in the fight against climate change.
Lee Zeldin, head of the US Environmental Protection Agency. Image: keystone
The “scientific” justification put forward by the US government partially directly contradicts previous scientific findings.
On the one hand, Zeldin argued that the risk assessment was based on “flawed climate models” that would have overestimated the warming of the planet in the coming decades. This reasoning is still partly correct: Some forecasts are actually less likely today because they are based on scenarios that do not take into account many climate protection measures that have since come into force, writes the New York Times. Findings from research since then also show that the speed of global warming has long been estimated even by science was underestimated rather than overestimated.
On the other hand, the justifications simply lack any scientific basis. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told Fox Business, for example: “CO₂ has never been a pollutant. When we breathe, we emit CO₂. Plants need CO₂ to survive and grow. They thrive better with more CO₂.”
Trump himself, who has described climate researchers as “stupid people” in the past, claimed on Thursday that the risk finding – which is based on over 200 pages of scientific evidence – has “no basis in reality.”
And what does the government really want with this?
It is known that Donald Trump received generous donations from the Fossil lobby during his election campaign – a whopping $450 million, according to the NYT. It is hardly surprising that he is committed to making it cheaper and easier to continue burning fossil fuels. At the same time, it is slowing down efforts to develop renewable energy.
The whole thing, like the decision to reverse the threat determination, is all part of Project 2025, the Trump administration’s now famous political roadmap.
Superficially, however, the Trump administration argues, as it so often does, that it is committed to supporting small and medium-sized businesses: The fact that the health authority has to deal with combating climate change has not only harmed the US economy. It also restricts consumers’ choices, for example when buying a car.
The Trump administration, whose voter favorability depends largely on inflation figures, may also expect a dampening price effect. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters a few days ago that the government predicts the move will result in “average savings of more than $2,400 per vehicle for popular small cars, SUVs and trucks.” However, how she came up with these numbers is not yet known.
In any case, the Trump administration seems to believe that the prices of fossil fuels such as gas and oil will become cheaper again in the future. But she does this without explaining how this happens, a scientist tells the NYT. The administration also uses outdated figures that, for example, do not take into account the future lower costs for batteries and electric vehicles. It is therefore difficult to find “a calculation in your assessment that does not seem, frankly, a little ridiculous,” said the scientist.
What are the reactions?
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, where coal remains a major economic driver, was among the few lawmakers to publicly praise Trump’s decision. Otherwise, various politicians sharply criticized the decision. Many of them, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, have already announced that they will sue. Newsom said:
“If this ill-advised decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more deaths from extreme heat, more climate-related floods and droughts, and greater risks to communities across the country.”
Barack Obama, during whose administration the climate protection regulations were installed, also reported: “Without the regulations, we will be less safe, less healthy and less able to combat climate change.”
The government also receives little support from the US economy. The tenor: Many companies have already invested heavily in reducing emissions. They also warn of legal uncertainties and a patchwork of stricter laws in individual states.
Even the president of the American Petroleum Institute, which represents oil and gas companies, expressed his opinion in a nuanced way: The industry still wants to abolish the regulations that apply to motor vehicles – but the government should continue to limit carbon dioxide and methane emissions from power plants and oil and gas drilling in the future. He also argues that most major oil and gas companies have already invested millions of dollars in measures to combat environmental pollution.
Now what does that mean?
According to legal scholars, it is unclear whether a lawsuit against this will really be successful – some see chances for the Trump administration and its legal justification. In the end, it will likely be the Supreme Court that will rule on this again.
The US government’s decision would be drastic for the country’s climate balance: the measure announced on Thursday, for example, lifts the restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. The transportation sector is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.
According to the Environmental NGO Environmental Defense Fund lead to a ten percent increase in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years. This could result in 58,000 premature deaths and an increase of 37 million asthma attacks by 2055 – in the USA alone.
The United States is currently the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, behind China. If you take the past into account, however, there is no country that has so far pumped as much CO₂ into the air as the USA.
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