Why rejecting the endangerment finding also rejects climate science

 

Scientists and policy experts say that by revoking the endangerment finding, the scientific justification for regulating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the Clean Air Act, the Donald J. Trump administration has reached a dangerous milestone in dismissing, ignoring, or directly contradicting scientific information in its policy decisions. But while scientists are dismayed by the action, some see a renewed role for their discipline in influencing climate policy in the US.

The second Trump administration has smacked science with blow after blow—canceling grants, killing funding, slashing budgets, and dismantling federal scientific offices. But rescinding the endangerment finding is probably the most egregious example so far of ignoring science, says Hannah Safford, associate director of climate and environment at the Federation of American Scientists. “We’ve amassed a great deal of science to demonstrate the impact that climate change is having, and the rollback of endangerment kind of says, ‘Well, we’re just going to put all that science to the side,’” she says. 

Julie McNamara, associate policy director in climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that while revoking the endangerment finding is in step with the path this administration has been on, it’s still a watershed moment. “It is one of those milestones where you say, ‘I can’t believe we’re here.’”

In the July proposal to rescind the endangerment finding, US Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin claimed that the science on climate change was undecided. As evidence, he cited a report written by the Climate Working Group (CWG), five researchers handpicked by Department of Energy secretary Chris Wright, which claimed the dangers from climate change were overblown.

The report caused an uproar in the scientific community, which lambasted it as cherry-picked, misleading, and fundamentally untrue. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine put out its own study that directly contradicted the CWG report, and a US district court judge later ruled the CWG illegal.

But the EPA rescinded the endangerment finding anyway. In the final rule (PDF), the agency avoids any debate over the impact of GHG buildup in the atmosphere. Instead, it claims that it lacks the authority to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act.

‘They’re not interested in more scientific information’

The danger of ignoring science and revoking the endangerment finding can’t be overstated, McNamara says. “We can’t ignore what it means to have the federal government look science in the face and deny its reality,” she says. “It’s eroding the foundations of what we all say is knowledge, what we all say is real.”

Even though the EPA did not end up using the CWG report as justification to remove the endangerment finding, the implied argument that climate science is not real is still there, McNamara says.

“Fundamentally, the EPA’s capacity to regulate greenhouse gas emissions is predicated on a scientific question,” Safford says. “What we’ve seen from this administration is that the science on climate change just doesn’t matter. It’s not that they’re feeling the science is unsettled and they want more information before making a decision,” she says. “They’re not interested in more scientific information.” 

Several scientific societies contributed comments to the EPA’s proposal to rescind the endangerment finding. The American Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, and the American Chemical Society all urged the agency to keep the finding intact. “Reversing findings that are based on multiple decades of peer reviewed research without sound scientific rationale is counterproductive and removes scientific input from the policy making process,” ACS says in its statement. (ACS publishes C&EN.)

But some scientific societies and science-based organizations have stayed silent. Valeria Sabate, public affairs manager for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, tells C&EN by email that the agency does not have a statement on the endangerment finding. The American Chemistry Council, an industry group, did not reply to a request for its stance on the action.

“Those societies, those interest groups that are specifically designed to support the needs and interests of science and scientists are needed now more than ever to speak up and speak out, because individual [scientists] cannot always do so,” McNamara says.

Robert W. Howarth, a biogeochemist at Cornell University, observes that the US is becoming increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-science. “Since the 1950s, the United States has probably been the leading country in the world for all sciences,” Howarth says. Scientists from all over have historically come to study and work in the US, turning it into a scientific powerhouse. “We’re losing that role,” he says. “This anti-science holding pattern is very damaging.”

Scientific authority is now not just being disregarded, McNamara adds; it’s being actively invoked as an insult or a reason not to listen to someone.  

“I always thought that being a scientist was a highly respected thing when I got my PhD,” Howarth says. “I don’t know if that’s true any longer.”

Not ‘a death blow to climate science’

Despite the setbacks, scientists, environmental groups, and some politicians are making it known that the fight is not over.

A group of 41 senators led by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has initiated an investigation into the EPA action, accusing the agency of viewing it as a predetermined objective. In a Feb. 13 letter to Zeldin (PDF), the group writes, “The collapse of the [CWG] effort simply underscores that EPA attempted, and failed, to manufacture support for a conclusion the established scientific record does not and cannot sustain.”

The Attorneys General of Massachusetts and California separately announced they will file lawsuits challenging the EPA’s final rule on the endangerment finding. Three environmental advocacy groups, the Environmental Defense Fund—the Sierra Club—and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), have also vowed to sue the EPA.

And even though the federal government’s decision to adopt climate denial in place of climate science as official US government policy is “chilling to the core,” scientists’ voices are far from useless, McNamara says.

After the CWG released its climate report, “the scientific community roared back and made such a sham of that report in so many ways,” she says. “I think the single most important takeaway is that the scientific community got activated, and the scientific community fought back, and the scientific community won, and it’s not over yet.” Scientists fighting back and raising their voices have been effective in the past, McNamara says, and caused the administration to back down in some cases, such as reversing grant cancellations and decisions on cutting climate and weather research. 

Moreover, federal officials aren’t the only ones that matter, Safford says. “State and local policymakers have really a great deal of authority around” climate policy, she says. 

There’s a big role for the scientific community to play in helping climate-policy decisions at the state and local levels, she says, and it can “also come up with new information products and research-based insights.”

Many realms outside of the federal government still respect science and scientists, McNamara says. “They’ll herald it, speak of it, and will amplify it when science is raised, when a scientist speaks out,” she says. This is happening not just in state and local government, but also at universities, academic societies, and science societies.

In the bigger picture, climate scientists are still making progress, Safford says. In the 20th century, one of the US’s biggest environmental challenges was industrial pollution. “And so most of our nation’s foundational environmental laws—Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, National Environmental Protection Act—these were all written to try and cut down on point sources of industrial pollution. And they did a really good job in doing that,” she says.

But in the 21st century, climate change is the central environmental problem, and it’s more of an economic challenge than an industrial one, Safford says. The focus isn’t on forcing industry to clean up its act but rather on guiding a society-wide transition to cleaner energy and technologies, she says.

“Regulations certainly play a role in that, though they’re imperfect” because they were developed mostly in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, before policymakers knew how to deal with climate change. The Federation of American Scientists recently launched the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity as a way to reimagine how the government creates regulations that work for more-modern problems, such as climate change.

We still need regulations, Safford says. “But I do think there’s this vibe that the revocation of the endangerment [finding] is a death blow to climate progress in a way that I think objectively is actually not.”