Trump has scrapped the long-standing legal basis for tackling climate emissions

“This determination had no basis in fact — none whatsoever,” Trump told the media on Thursday. “And it had no basis in law. On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world.”

But without federal action to curb emissions, the impact of climate change will intensify. The US is the “indispensable state” when it comes achieving the goals and principles of the Paris Agreement. Although China’s annual aggregate emissions are much higher than the US’s, the US is the world’s largest historical emitter, which makes it the most causally responsible for the global heating that has already occurred.

Yet the Trump administration regards climate change as a hoax. Trump has withdrawn the US not only from the Paris Agreement but also the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In short, the US is now actively fanning the flame of global heating.

In a case of history repeating itself, the arguments being made by Zedlin are pretty much the same as those once put forward by the original opponents of the endangerment finding: claiming that the original legislation was supposed to apply only to local pollutants such as smog, but not greenhouse gases, and that the science isn’t clear.

Those arguments don’t stack up, because there is indisputable evidence that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases do indeed harm human health and welfare. The EPA is obliged to regulate harmful pollutants at the specific source.

What’s next?

This move will trigger court cases, which won’t be resolved quickly. Zedlin and Trump will face a crowd of litigants, including environment groups and NGOs. The Trump administration will likely ignore these and steam ahead with its “drill, baby, drill” slogan.

If the lawsuits fail, or Trump ignores them, it will be devastating. There will be no overarching federal legislation directly regulating emissions in the US. What’s more, a new Democrat president committed to climate action will not have this easy lever to regulate greenhouse gases. Instead, they will have to get new climate legislation through an intensely polarised Congress.

However, there are ways forward. Assuming Trump is prepared to leave office after his second term (admittedly, a big if), it is possible a new Democratic administration might have the numbers in Congress to enact new climate legislation. In the meantime, climate action is continuing to ratchet up at the state and city level in many US states.