Burning Questions: The EPA repealed the endangerment finding. Who are the economic winners and losers?
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What is the significance of the EPA's repeal of the endangerment finding?
Hey everyone, I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive. And while we're hard at work on the next season coming this spring, some news broke earlier this month that we just had to talk about. So we're back with another episode of Burning Questions, our series where we answer what you want to know about the climate crisis. On February 12th, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding. That's the EPA's official determination, issued in 2009, that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. And it's the legal foundation for the government's authority to regulate those emissions. This is a big deal. The repeal means the end of federal greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles.
The EPA says this will save consumers money, but many see it as a huge setback for climate policy in the United States. So this episode, we're talking about the economic winners and losers of this repeal. First, we'll look at the big picture impacts on public health and the economy with a climate scientist. And then we'll talk about what this means for the U.S. auto industry with a clean energy expert. So let's get into it.
First, I spoke with Chris Field. He was part of the team from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He's the director of Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment and a professor in Earth System Science and Biology. So our burning question today is, with the repeal of the endangerment finding, the Trump administration is dismantling U.S. climate policy. Who are the economic winners and losers of this repeal?
You know, I think the big loser is really the American people. I think that repealing the endangerment finding signals of stepping away from the biggest economic opportunity and the biggest leadership opportunity of the 21st century. And I think the consequence of the endangerment finding is that we'll basically subject American consumers to being saddled with legacy technologies moving into the future. And the big winner, I think, is China. And China has made amazing commitments to delivering low-cost solar panels, low-cost wind, low-cost electric vehicles. And I think that that positions them to be a leader in the future. And unfortunately, we're going to have to really struggle if we want to catch up.
And yet the EPA says that repealing the endangerment finding will save consumers money. Is that not true?
Well, it is true that the cost of purchasing an efficient vehicle or an electric vehicle is a little bit higher than the cost of purchasing one that doesn't have the efficiency mechanisms. But especially with gas mileage restrictions, which is one of the main regulatory levers that the EPA has used, the initial extra cost of having the efficiency features gets paid back over time as customers save money by requiring less fuel or by providing a cheaper fuel through electricity.
So when the Trump administration says these regulations have added to the cost of vehicles, that is a cost that consumers can hope to recoup over time as they spend less money on gas?
That's exactly right. The total ownership cost of the more efficient vehicles is often less than the total ownership cost of the vehicles that might have been cheaper at the point of initial purchase.
Obviously, there are enormous costs associated with climate change itself. But what do we know specifically about the public health costs of greenhouse gas emissions?
In the initial justification for the endangerment finding back in 2009, the EPA did a very careful evaluation of the available literature on the impacts of climate change on public health and well-being and concluded there was overwhelming evidence that greenhouse the damages from climate change are clear. The evidence is much, much stronger now. The health consequences of climate change have just become increasingly clear, and they include not only effects of extreme heat on excess mortality, they include effects of extra particulates from wildfire smoke,
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