The New York Times, September 2025
A major new analysis issued Wednesday by the nation’s leading scientific advisory body, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, found that the evidence linking rising emissions to negative human health outcomes is “beyond scientific dispute.” The timing of the report matters: It comes as the Environmental Protection Agency prepares to enter a new phase in its efforts to reverse a landmark scientific determination that gives the federal government the legal authority regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
The Trump administration wants to roll back the 2009 endangerment finding, which determined that carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases threaten human health and can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Because the endangerment finding forms the basis for so many other rules, some conservatives have seen rolling it back as a way to knock down multiple climate regulations at once. Announcing plans to revoke the finding in July, Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, called it “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.”
