Have you been hot this summer? Do you expect your electric bills to rise? You aren’t alone, and it’s not going to get any better now that Lee Zeldin, Trump’s anti-environmental head of the EPA, is planning to eliminate the Endangerment Finding, a policy that goes back to 2009 and has allowed the EPA to establish limits on fossil fuel emissions from cars and industries that rely on fossil fuels.

To support Zeldin’s action, the Trump administration funded research by five scientists who reject the mainstream scientific consensus that climate change is caused primarily by human activity leading to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at rates never seen in human history. Their leader is a physicist. Their report claims that CO2 is good for agriculture and encourages plant growth. I wonder if they also think that heat waves and monumental floods are good for plant or human growth.

This latest move by the Trump administration joins other efforts to bolster the fossil fuel industry like refusing permits and federal funds for wind and solar projects and attacking California’s fuel emission standards. And the EPA has streamlined the process for the fossil fuel industry to get exemptions from the current regulations. All it takes is an email requesting an exemption from Lee Zelder. Fifteen coal-burning operations have done this successfully already. I suppose it’s a kind of stop-gap maneuver until there are no regulations to be exempted from.

In 2007, the Supreme Court heard Massachusetts vs the Environmental Protection Agency on the subject of greenhouses gases. Their decision reflected findings of climate scientists, and they ruled that greenhouse gases were pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court ordered the EPA to determine if greenhouse gases were harmful to human health and if they were, to take appropriate action. The EPA’s research did indeed show that greenhouse gases harmed human health, and this led to the regulations limiting emissions from industries using fossil fuels and from automobiles as well.

Under the current head of the EPA, all of these regulations could disappear, and we can look forward to more floods, fires and the disappearance of habitats and the creatures who survive because of them as the resurgence of greenhouse gases once again endangers ourselves and our world.

ELLEN A. BLAIS

Mansfield

Submitted by Virtual Newsroom