Trump has done more than harm the government's ability to fight global heating | Jamil Smith

"The climate crisis is killing people. These deaths are measurable, documented and ongoing. Concluding otherwise is just playing pretend. Studies explain the mechanics, but lived experience supplies the truth. The people who suffer the consequences see the fire rising and water closing in. They need their government's help. Despite that, the president of the United States stood at a microphone last Thursday and abdicated his duty to them."

"It has nothing to do with public health, he claimed about the climate crisis while announcing that the federal government would repeal the Environmental Protection Agency's endangerment finding, a determination that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare. This is all a scam, a giant scam. What he was lying about is a truth the federal government even under his first administration has embraced for nearly two decades."

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued the endangerment finding in 2009. Drawing upon extensive scientific evidence, the EPA concluded that emissions driving the climate crisis contribute to extreme heat, intensified storms, rising sea levels, wildfires and degraded air quality, all of which carry direct consequences for human life and safety. The endangerment finding was not rhetorical flourish. It was the legal keystone of modern US climate regulation, the scientific and administrative determination that enabled the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions."

The climate crisis is causing measurable, documented deaths and worsening threats such as extreme heat, intensified storms, rising seas, wildfires and degraded air quality. The EPA issued an endangerment finding in 2009 concluding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare and enabling federal regulation of emissions under the Clean Air Act. Repealing that finding removes the legal foundation for vehicle, power-plant and industry emissions standards and withdraws official recognition of harms millions already face. The president publicly denied the public-health link and labeled the problem a scam, reversing nearly two decades of federal acknowledgment.

Read at www.theguardian.com