ghgs (13. 168)

The culmination of a decade and a half concerted effort by lawyers and lobbyists realised through the Trump presidency, the US Environmental Protection Agency will repeal the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding, meaning that the organisation can no longer regulate green house gases as pollutants and harmful to human health or the climate. The foundation of much of America’s laws pertaining to emissions, this move is regarded as the most aggressive action yet against initiatives to contain or curb global warming, though the country, historically the largest contributor to the anthropic climate change has been on a trajectory of relinquishing responsibility and the mantle of concern or progress steadily for some time, the rescission was based on the testimony of motivated skeptics. And whilst some jurisdictions and environmental advocacy groups (including some in the industrial sector having pivoted to greener models) are fighting back, it is feared that US outsized influence for a planetary problem that is not contained by borders will reverse what progress has been made (part of the commissioned pseudo-scientific study that brought about this repeal was premised on government overreach and hyperbolic forecasts—which, yes, the worst as not occurred as predicted back in 2007, as with the averted y2k disaster, because of global cooperation and action) and engender despair and resignation as the Earth continues to stew and bake. One legal remedy is for the US congress to authorise the EPA the specific mandate to regulate green house gases, rather than the implication under the Clean Air Act, but that won’t happen under this administration, hoping that the delay and legal battles will be long enough to forestall reversal and made binding by the supreme court.