By: Jacob Kim
This is not a joke. This isn’t some fringe proposal that will get buried. The Environmental Protection Agency, under Trump’s leadership, just claimed that carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants are not a significant danger. Let that sink in. They are saying that the gas most responsible for climate change isn’t a problem.
This is beyond irresponsible. It’s terrifying.
The EPA was created to protect people and the planet, not hand the keys over to oil executives. Yet here we are, watching an entire agency rewrite science to serve fossil fuel interests. And it’s not just people like me calling this out. The Associated Press asked 30 scientists — actual experts in climate, health, and economics — and not one supported the EPA’s claim. Many called it disinformation. Because that’s exactly what it is.
Zeke Hausfather said it’s like claiming smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer. Michael Mann compared it to saying arsenic is safe to eat. This isn’t debate. This is deliberate ignorance. And it’s going to cost lives.
We already know what burning coal and gas does. We’ve known for decades. It releases carbon dioxide, and CO₂ warms the planet. That’s physics. That’s fact. And yet the Trump administration is pretending otherwise, like they can bend reality to fit their agenda.
Columbia economist R. Daniel Bressler found that just one year of emissions from a single coal plant could lead to more than 900 deaths and over a billion dollars in climate-related damage. That’s one plant. One year. Now imagine the cost of letting the entire fossil fuel industry run wild, unregulated, while the agency meant to stop them looks the other way.
This decision doesn’t just deny science. It denies responsibility. It denies accountability. And it denies the humanity of everyone already living with the consequences of climate change — from families breathing in toxic air to communities underwater or on fire.
Stanford’s Chris Field called this one of the dumbest decisions imaginable. And honestly, he’s right. There is no excuse. No defense. This is choosing the short-term profits of oil companies over the health, safety, and future of millions of people.
Andrew Weaver went further, saying this kind of denial could be considered a crime against humanity. That may sound dramatic, but what else would you call a conscious choice to ignore science and put generations at risk?
We don’t have time for this. Climate change isn’t coming — it’s here. Every delay, every rollback, every lie makes it harder to fix what’s already breaking. We need leaders who take the science seriously and act like lives depend on it, because they do.
This isn’t just bad policy. It’s a moral failure. And we can’t stay quiet about it.
Sources
Energy Outlook 
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