No. 51 of 108
August 3, 2025
In 1999, the Environmental Protection Agency began formulating what would eventually become the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. The core finding? That pollution caused by climate change affects and endangers human health. After a rigorous process, the Act took effect in 2009. Fifteen years later, the Agency is now in a comment period with the intention of eliminating and nullifying the findings. If/when the Act “is done”, most of the pollution and greenhouse gas emissions regulations will have no underlying (accepted in law) findings to rely upon, rendering them easier to be challenged, overturned, disregarded, or deemed unenforceable. The Agency has already stopped enforcing several of its own regulations, sometimes at the order of the White House. This Act is also part of the legal structure for the country’s regulations and investment in energy sources other than fossil fuels. Most federal funding has been suspended. The Big Beautiful Bill ended incentives for solar and electrical vehicles.
Governments lead and lag. By leading and lagging, I mean sometimes governments are ahead of what it is the people want/need/know, and sometimes they are behind. Leading isn’t always beneficial. Lagging is rarely beneficial. Both leading and lagging in of themselves can be harmful. The processes of government require fact-finding. Fact-finding is subject to fact-understanding, fact-discernment, fact-belief, fact-teaching, fact-implementation, and fact-follow. If we cut it short after celebrating the win of the official fact-found… well. Did the government lead or lag in 2009? Yes. The stress test is whether twenty-six years later we, the people, know better and act accordingly. While chaos roils and many facts and consequential things are upended, it will need to be in the small and accumulated ways… for now, and for some time to come. A good lesson. Just because a government says it is so doesn’t mean it is so. Maka‘ala! Eyes wide open!