There is no scientific evidence to support the EPA’s greenhouse gas plan

The Environmental Protection Agency’s landmark 2009 Endangerment Finding established that greenhouse gases pose a demonstrable risk to public health and welfare through their role in anthropogenic climate change. The recent proposal by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to repeal this finding is not only scientifically untenable but represents a deliberate disengagement from decades of rigorous climate science, validated predictive modeling and overwhelming empirical evidence.

Any attempt to revoke the Endangerment Finding constitutes a rejection of the scientific method itself.

Climate science is not in a state of theoretical infancy nor epistemological ambiguity. Over 97 percent of active climate researchers and virtually every major scientific body — including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Sciences — are part of this robust consensus. Human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from fossil fuel combustion, are the primary driver of global warming.

To repeal the Endangerment Finding would be to engage in institutional gaslighting, effectively disregarding the unified voice of an entire scientific community and the foundational tenets of evidence-based policy.

Since the Endangerment Finding’s inception, the world has functioned as a natural laboratory, producing an unrelenting stream of data confirming and amplifying the original conclusion. There are many well-known observational metrics that support the evidence.

Global surface temperatures have risen dramatically, with each of the last 10 years ranking among the warmest on record. Cryospheric or frozen habitat decay is accelerating. Arctic summer sea ice has declined by more than 40 percent since the 1980s; Antarctica’s ice shelves are fracturing. Ocean acidification has increased by more than 30 percent since the pre-industrial era, threatening planktonic life and coral reef ecosystems. Extreme weather events, from Category 5 hurricanes to record-breaking heat domes, are increasing in both frequency and severity.

These phenomena are no longer projections. They are empirical confirmations of climate models, strengthening the evidentiary core of the Endangerment Finding.

The biosphere does not segregate environmental and human health. The climate crisis acts as a “syndemic” catalyst — two or more diseases interacting — intensifying multiple overlapping public health crises. These include respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses from ozone smog and wildfire smoke; infectious diseases migrating with climate-driven shifts in vector habitats (such as Lyme disease, dengue and Zika); heat-related mortality, now a leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S.; and mental health deterioration due to displacement, climate trauma and eco-anxiety.

Revoking the Endangerment Finding is tantamount to denying the pathophysiological reality of climate-linked diseases that are affecting millions.

The 2009 Finding was not issued arbitrarily; it emerged from a meticulous legal-scientific symbiosis. The Clean Air Act, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007), obliges the agency to regulate greenhouse gases if they are found to endanger public health and welfare — a burden of proof met and exceeded. The legal architecture supporting the Endangerment Finding is buttressed by peer-reviewed science, exhaustive public comment and judicial validation.

Repealing it would not only contravene scientific logic — it would undermine statutory law and invite protracted litigation.

One of the most compelling validations of the Endangerment Finding is the retrodictive and predictive accuracy of climate models. Models from the 1980s to the 2000s predicted today’s warming trends with remarkable fidelity, including geographic and seasonal variation. Models accurately forecast the rise in upper-atmospheric water vapor, sea-level rise and regional hydrological shifts. These are not the products of guesswork; they are dynamic, physics-based simulations consistently corroborated by observational data.

To ignore this track record is to dismiss one of the most successful scientific endeavors in predictive environmental science.

The proposal to repeal the 2009 Endangerment Finding is not merely a political maneuver. It is a scientific regression — a policy drift toward willful ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence. To discard this foundation would be to extinguish a guiding light of modern environmental stewardship and replace it with epistemic darkness.

As the planet warms, as ice melts and as air becomes more hazardous to breathe, we must ask: On what scientific grounds can we afford to abandon our defenses? The answer, clearly, is none.

Thomas S. Bianchi is a distinguished professor emeritus in geological sciences at the University of Florida and currently an affiliate research professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire.