🧠THE AMERICAN DEATH WISH
How Repealing the Endangerment Finding Is a Global Act of Self-Sabotage
(by adaptationguide.com)
When a government erases science, it erases its future.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal to repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding” — the ruling that greenhouse gases endanger public health and therefore must be regulated — is not policymaking.
It’s political vandalism.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin argues that the “burden” to industries of cutting greenhouse gases outweighs the damage of a warming planet. Translation: short-term profits now, mass extinction later.
A Nation Choosing Ignorance Over Intelligence
The 2009 finding was the backbone of U.S. climate regulation — the legal bridge connecting science to survival. Without it, the federal government can no longer regulate CO₂ and methane under the Clean Air Act.
Repealing that bridge doesn’t “cut red tape.” It cuts oxygen.
“This is something that the vast majority of industry didn’t ask for and doesn’t want,” said Zach Friedman of Ceres, representing 59 companies opposing the EPA’s plan.
Even automakers, utilities, and oil companies — the usual suspects in deregulation — have begged the agency to slow down.
They know what happens next: lawsuits from states, city-by-city regulations, corporate chaos.
The Science Doesn’t Disappear Because You Delete It
Sixteen years after the original endangerment finding, the evidence has only multiplied:
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Global air temperatures up 1.3°C since 1900.
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Sea levels rising at double the 20th-century rate.
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Wildfire smoke blanketing continents.
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Climate-linked diseases spreading north.
Dr. Scott Saleska of the University of Arizona put it bluntly:
“Ignoring that evidence puts an exclamation point on the idea that science, as the best method we have for discerning objective reality, has no role in this government.”
The EPA’s justification for repeal leans on a Trump-era Energy Department report authored by five known climate contrarians — a report denounced by the National Academies of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, and over 85 U.S. climate scientists for “gross inaccuracies and distortion of the record.”
This is not “regulatory reform.” It’s a disinformation campaign with a federal seal.
The Global Fallout: Pollution Has No Passport
When the U.S. renounces science, the world loses leverage.
If America kills the legal foundation for greenhouse gas regulation, it’s not just a domestic issue — it’s a breach of planetary responsibility.
Pollution knows no borders.
Other nations will ask: Why should we cooperate with a superpower that treats science as a partisan inconvenience?
Calls to expel the U.S. from environmental accords may sound extreme — but so is the act of scrubbing out the scientific basis of regulation itself.
Business Realism vs. Political Nihilism
Even the American Petroleum Institute has warned that federal inaction will create “market fragmentation and legal instability.”
The Edison Electric Institute fears a patchwork of conflicting state rules.
American Honda warns of “technological stagnation.”
Repeal doesn’t bring stability — it invites chaos.
It’s a deregulation death spiral: an economy that eats itself for one more quarter of profit.
The Verdict: A Self-Inflicted Wound
This is America’s Death Wish — a voluntary collapse of environmental governance masquerading as “freedom.”
You can’t deregulate physics.
You can only deregulate your chance of surviving it.
“Climate policy isn’t theft from industry. It’s an insurance premium for civilization.”
Further Reading & Citations
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Science doesn’t care about your politics. But your politics might kill your planet.
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