Trump's Abandonment of Climate Regulation Proves His Is Not a Legitimate Government
The US government is refusing to fulfill its fundamental obligation to protect public health and safety at home, and showing open disdain for the lives and well-being of people worldwide.
The White House recently announced what might be its most brazen attack on climate science yet. Roughlyo months ago, the administration rolled out plans to repeal the federal government’s “Endangerment Finding”—essentially, its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants.
This 2009 finding by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined that the increase in public health and safety risks caused by climate change—such as extreme heat, wildfire smoke, ozone pollution, and catastrophic weather events such as hurricanes and flooding—justified regulating greenhouse gases as pollutants.
That’s the legal underpinning for everything from vehicle fuel economy standards to the requirement for power plants and factories to measure and report their emissions. Since 2009, the scientific basis for these rules has only grown stronger. This is borne out by successive studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most authoritative global climate science institution.
The most recent report by the IPCC working group assessing the state of knowledge on climate science, a collaboration of 234 prominent scientists from across the world, found overwhelming evidence that the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land have warmed rapidly since the start of the industrial era—and that the warming is attributable to emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases.
The regime’s decision wasn’t driven solely by ignorance or stupidity. Fossil fuel oligarchs have essentially bribed the president (in response to his open solicitation, no less), and penetrated the highest ranks of government.
Another IPCC working group, consisting of 330 of the world’s leading scientists, found that more frequent and severe weather and climate extremes attributable to climate change, such as heatwaves on land and on oceans, droughts, and wildfires, have already resulted in “widespread adverse impacts” on “ecosystems, people, settlements, and infrastructure.”
In recent years, other studies have found that climate change made many severe weather events in the US and across the world likelier and more destructive, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the US in 2024, deadly flooding in Pakistan and a record-breaking heatwave in Iceland and Greenland in 2025, and devastating flooding in Southern Africa earlier this year.
The Trump regime has attempted to counter this overwhelming body of rigorous, peer-reviewed science with government-sponsored misinformation. It has published a report written by five handpicked scientists, purporting to show that there is too much uncertainty about human-caused climate change. Large numbers of scientists from a wide variety of disciplines have condemned this report as methodologically flawed and relying on cherry-picked evidence, and have provided a detailed rebuttal.
In typical fashion, however, the Trump regime has ignored mountains of incontrovertible evidence to race ahead with repealing the Endangerment Finding, giving themselves a legal fig leaf for their actions to enable expansion of polluting industries and dismantle environmental protections.
This is a direct attack on communities throughout the country who have lost their loved ones, their homes, and their livelihoods because of fossil-fueled wildfires, storms, and floods, and communities who will inevitably suffer similar disasters as a consequence of the regime’s refusal to address the threat of climate change.
It’s also an attack on communities experiencing, or increasingly likely to experience, similar disasters worldwide. It is nothing short of a declaration of war against humanity.
The regime’s decision wasn’t driven solely by ignorance or stupidity. Fossil fuel oligarchs have essentially bribed the president (in response to his open solicitation, no less), and penetrated the highest ranks of government. They’re getting the policy outcomes they want, enriching themselves at the expense of people and the planet.
The US government is refusing to fulfill its fundamental obligation to protect public health and safety at home, and showing open disdain for the lives and well-being of people worldwide. This is occurring in the broader context of a government that is practically at war with its own population, flagrantly violating basic human rights in pursuit of an extremist ideological agenda.
A government that refuses to fulfill its most basic responsibilities even as it assaults citizens and knowingly exposes people worldwide to serious harm is not a legitimate government. Governments worldwide need to recognize this reality, and do everything in their power to protect their own people, and stand up for human rights in the US.
This op-ed may be republished with attribution to InsideSources.com.
