US climate actions must continue, despite setbacks

"The endangerment finding originated from a section of the Clean Air Act that deals with vehicle emissions. This section required the EPA to work out whether pollution from vehicles endangers public welfare. Once the agency made that determination in 2009 for greenhouse gases from vehicles, it used the same finding as the legal foundation for regulating emissions from various sources such as power plants, buildings and other forms of transport."

"Now, the EPA has overturned the endangerment finding by repealing the country's vehicle-emissions standards. This sets up a domino effect. If it no longer applies to vehicles, that undermines the legal basis for regulating emissions across all sectors."

"Climate impacts are not just legal and academic. They are already pushing up food costs. Prices of beef are increasing because droughts in western states, intensified by rising temperatures, have reduced the sizes of usable grazing land and cattle herds."

The Trump administration's EPA rescinded the Clean Air Act's endangerment finding on February 12, which established that greenhouse-gas emissions endanger US public health and welfare. This finding, originally established in 2009 for vehicle emissions, served as the legal basis for regulating emissions across all sectors including power plants and buildings. By repealing vehicle-emissions standards, the EPA triggered a domino effect undermining climate regulations broadly. Environmental and public-health groups are challenging this decision in federal court. Despite this federal rollback, many states and cities continue transitioning to clean-energy technologies, recognizing economic and job benefits. Climate impacts already affect food costs through drought-induced cattle herd reductions and crop damage from extreme weather.

Read at Nature