Show Notes
The Trump administration last week announced the repeal of the ‘endangerment finding’ - the 2009 determination that climate change threatens public health and welfare. It may sound arcane, but this piece of legislation empowered the US federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. This decision weakens the regulatory backbone of American climate policy, and may reshape the country’s emissions trajectory for years to come.
So what happens next?
This week, Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett-Carnac and Paul Dickinson consider the politics, the economics and the climate reality of this move. And Tom calls friend of the show Manish Bapna, President and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose organisation is preparing to challenge the rollback in court. Speaking to us just as the case was filed, Manish explains why the endangerment finding has long been the legal bedrock of federal climate action, and how the case could climb all the way to the Supreme Court.
Until then, uncertainty reins: is this a temporary political detour - or a structural turning point for US climate leadership? And if federal authority falters, will states, businesses and markets keep the transition moving anyway?
Learn More:
🌿 Learn how the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding established the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases
📊 Understand the ‘Social Cost of Carbon’ - and why putting a price on climate damage matters
⚖️ Read the statement from NRDC and its partners outlining their legal challenge to the rollback
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism
Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Outrage + Optimism
In Digger, Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon whose rig sets off a tsunami. Within days of release, it was written off as a flop. Christiana Figueres has seen it twice, and she has questions about how quickly that verdict arrived. As she sees it, the film puts the fossil fuel lobby squarely in the frame.
Before she was Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris agreement, who was she? What did believe in 2015 that she no longer believes?
A ship rams a canoe. The canoe starts to sink. The ship's crew lean over the rail and offer a loan to repair it.
Net Zero was once a radical idea. Now it’s both an accepted global target, and an increasingly toxic political faultline.
The news cameras may be following rising tensions between President Trump and President Pezeshkian of Iran, but deep in the bowels of the United Nations, fifteen countries are about to choose, in private, the person who speaks for 8 billion people.