We're Gonna Breathe Like It's 1969

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Welcome back, folks! Your faithful correspondent missed you!

No, Donald Trump didn’t kidnap The Truth About in a daring midnight raid. Everything is fine. Well, not really; the air is about to get a lot worse for a lot of people in a very literal way.

For a president who spends most of his time on the golf course or hanging out at his Mar-a-Lago club, Donald Trump sure seems to find a lot of time to create new scandals. In fact, Trump is so adept at layering outrage over outrage that the mainstream media often misses the fact that his most damaging policy moves are often the least sensational. That’s by design - and it’s depressing how often it works.

This week Trump launched another understated attack on modernity by ordering the Environmental Protection Agency to abandon its 2009 “endangerment finding,” a landmark scientific ruling that greenhouse gas emissions harm both the planet and the people living on it. That Obama-era decision has proved to be one of the most impactful steps in reining in major polluters. Now it’s history, and the polluting industries who supported Trump’s re-election campaign couldn’t be happier. Let’s dive in.

— Max Burns

It’s tough to think back to the ancient days of 2007, but that was when the Bush-era Supreme Court ruled on the landmark case Massachusetts v. EPA. In a 5-4 decision, the court found that the greenhouse gases emitted by cars and polluting factories were “unambiguously” pollutants that caused “undeniable” personal injuries to the people forced to breathe them. It was a big deal, and it enabled the Obama administration to empower the EPA to broadly regulate those poisons. 

The effect was immediate and, like the damage caused by greenhouse gases, undeniable. Added to existing EPA regulations, Obama’s new fuel efficiency standards for vehicles and stringent emissions laws for factories contributed to preventing over 230,000 early deaths from pollution-related illnesses. At the same time, a healthier workforce contributed an additional $2 trillion to the economy because of fewer total sick days. According to research by StatNews, EPA regulations have returned over $70 in economic and public health gains for every federal dollar spent. Efficient! 

Still, the polluters weren’t happy. It didn’t matter that new fuel efficiency standards allowed American car companies to compete in global markets, or that industrial production remained stable despite the new regulations. Fortunately for the bad guys, Donald Trump has always been willing to exchange campaign contributions for policies that benefit the donor class, even if they hurt his actual red state voters. 

In one of the first acts of his second term, Trump ordered the EPA to stop calculating the money and lives saved from regulating air pollution, in large part because the number was so high that even Republicans struggled to criticize the agency’s work. Now the removal of the EPA’s endangerment finding means that vehicle emissions standards will soon be a thing of the past, making American cars less appealing to international markets and hurting economic growth. If that wasn’t enough, Trump also ended environmental credits that encouraged manufacturers to use reflective paint and stop-start engine technology, an innovation which increased vehicle fuel efficiency by up to 20%. The result will be higher fuel costs, dirtier air, and a market downturn for America’s already struggling automakers.

There’s also another group about to take a lot of pain: Regular people who breathe air. That’s because Trump’s regulations aren’t just an effort to toss the climate change political football; they are about to trigger a public health crisis that experts warn could cost taxpayers trillions of dollars a year.

According to research from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Americans face more than $820 billion in annual healthcare costs related to pollution and pollution-related climate instability. And that’s with the EPA empowered to regulate polluters. Without the endangerment finding, the costs of treatment easily vault over $1 trillion per year. Those costs are spread throughout the country, but are especially concentrated in areas with heavy industries. In other words, the same red states that elected Donald Trump in 2024. 

That puts Americans in a double bind, because many of the people most likely to suffer health problems from increased pollution also depend on the Affordable Care Act for their health insurance. Or at least, they did until Republicans allowed the ACA subsidies to expire last year, effectively kicking millions of American families off of ACA plans they can no longer afford. Many of those families are now uninsured, meaning the increased cost of their pollution-related health problems falls on the taxpayers while polluting industries that sickened them privatize record profits.

Trump’s adopted home state of Florida is a good example. Under EPA regulations, the state has been gradually converting from expensive methane gas to powering homes and businesses with renewable energy. Without those regulations, utility companies “face less pressure to shift to cleaner, more affordable and less volatile energy sources,” worsening air quality and adding to the pace of climate change in Florida. Insurance companies are already refusing to write plans for Florida homes due to the risk of rising sea levels, leading to what The Zebra called an “insurance crisis.” If the state shifts back to an all-methane strategy, millions of its homes could become entirely uninsurable, leading to skyrocketing costs for homeowners.

Increased pollution along the Florida coast would worsen red tides that close beaches and harm commercial fisheries and the state’s critical tourism industry. A National Institute of Health study found that asthma rates would also increase as vehicle emissions rise, leading to rising health costs for seniors and young children. In short, Florida would become an excessively costly state with a largely unlivable air quality for most of the people who currently live there. Now repeat that story across the entire south and the scale of Trump’s twinned affordability-health crisis becomes clear.

The American Public Health Association, public health groups and environmental advocates are suing the Trump administration in an effort to force the EPA to do its job. That case will almost certainly make it to the Supreme Court, but the court is very different today than it was in 2007. Of the justices who ruled on Massachusetts v. EPA nearly a decade ago, the only ones still on the bench are the Republicans who voted to protect polluters. The courts are the best chance to reverse Trump’s decision. They’re also a long shot at best. 

For now the EPA ruling is limited to vehicle emissions, but Trump has made clear that he plans to continue cutting the EPA until practically nothing is left. That may be politically tougher than he thinks. 65% of voters now link Trump’s bad climate policies to rising consumer prices in their daily lives, and they are prepared to take that anger to the polls in November. Vulnerable Republicans may not be willing to risk their jobs on the promise of returning America to the days of smog alerts and childhood asthma epidemics.

Trump has once again prioritized the ultra-rich over the needs of regular Americans. But unlike some of his other attacks on good government, repealing the EPA’s power to regulate greenhouse gas pollution is a change most Americans will feel in their wallets and in their lungs. If Trump gets his way, Republicans may soon find themselves gasping for air amid a midterm electoral disaster.