00:00Environmental groups have blasted the decision, saying it spells the end of the road for U.S. action against climate change, even as the impacts of global warming become more severe.
00:11The Trump administration said this week that it would be rescinding the longstanding finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, removing the legal foundation for all American greenhouse gas regulations.
00:24The EPA proposal must go through a lengthy review process, including public comment, before being finalised likely next year.
00:33Well, for more, let's bring in Dan Becker. He's director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Centre for Biological Diversity.
00:42Thanks, Dan, for being with us on the programme this evening.
00:46Thanks for having me on.
00:46It's called the 2009 Endangerment Finding. You describe that as the biggest single step any nation has taken to combat global warming.
00:56Just tell us exactly what that was and how it came to change our lives, American lives, for the better.
01:02Actually, the biggest single step are the clean car rules that Trump announced also yesterday that he's rescinding.
01:12Those would cut seven gigatons of carbon dioxide over the life of the vehicles being made.
01:17But the two of these go together in that the science determination has encouraged the government to take action against global warming pollution.
01:31And taking that away is doing an enormous favour for the oil industry, which funded Trump's campaign to the tune of $445 million.
01:41So this is payback. And it's a dreadful blow to those who want to combat global warming.
01:49The US is the second biggest global warming emitter in the world after China.
01:56And the consequences are huge.
02:00We're going to have to figure out a way to undo this, but it's going to be tough.
02:04One hope is that the Trump administration is going to have to go into courts
02:08and argue that the science behind global warming is bunk.
02:13And it's not.
02:15The world's leading scientists are on our side and demanding that we take action.
02:21So convincing a court, even a conservative one, that the science is a fraud is an uphill battle for the Trump administration.
02:29But we still have individual sources like automobiles, power plants, factories that have to be controlled.
02:36Otherwise, the US will continue to guzzle and pollute and spew emissions.
02:42And the Trump administration, it claims that these kind of regulations, these environmental regulations, they're too costly.
02:48They're overreaching.
02:50Why exactly, though, is this all happening now, in your view?
02:55Well, it's happening now because Trump won.
02:57And, you know, a year ago, April, he served a chopped steak to a bunch of oil CEOs at Mar-a-Lago and said,
03:09if you give me a billion dollars for my campaign, I'll do anything you want.
03:13They gave him basically $445 million, and now he's doing the everything that they want.
03:19So all of the rollbacks on clean cars, on clean power, on renewable energy, all of that is at the behest of the oil industry and sometimes the auto industry.
03:30And it's having terrible consequences for the United States, including for American automakers who will lose their shirts to China because China is going to make clean vehicles.
03:43They don't have a Trump in office who denies the facts.
03:48And the Chinese have companies like BYD, which most Americans have never heard of, but Europeans are beginning to.
03:56They sold four and a half million EVs last year, electric vehicles.
04:00And there's no place to go but up for the Chinese if the American manufacturer is uniformly disarmed, which is what they're invited to do by Trump.
04:11And Dan, you mentioned the courts there a little earlier.
04:14Is there likely then, is it inevitable that there will be legal challenges to these plans?
04:18If so, will they succeed and on what grounds, do you think?
04:24There absolutely will be challenges.
04:26Whether they succeed is not my decision.
04:29It's up to very conservative judges, many of whom have been appointed by Trump.
04:33And the chances are far from certain that they will act in a reasonable manner.
04:43They are also afraid of Trump.
04:45He's tried to threaten some of them, both in terms of taking away their authority, refusing to do what they order his administration to do,
04:56and even to essentially threaten their safety and the safety of their families.
05:02So, Mr. Trump is acting like a thug when it comes to the courts.
05:08And whether they kowtow to him is not yet clear.
05:12And Dan, we've been talking about tariffs this evening.
05:14There's also concerns being raised about the effects that those kind of measures can have when it comes to the environment.
05:20These tariffs that Trump is announcing cuts other various policies and really the uncertainty that all of this is creating,
05:27for example, in the geothermal industry and for other cleaner energy sources.
05:32Well, I'm not a trade lawyer.
05:36I'm an environmental lawyer.
05:38And so I'm not an expert in the tariffs.
05:41They certainly are adding pressure to American companies at a time when American companies need to deal with the changes that Trump is throwing at them.
05:50They're also, of course, a challenge for companies that sell products to the United States.
05:56We want to buy clean vehicles.
05:58We want to buy clean energy.
06:00And to the extent that Trump is trying to prevent that from happening with 100 percent tariff, for example, on Chinese electric vehicles,
06:08that's a real problem both for the United States and for the rest of the world, because the atmosphere is a global commons.
06:15And whatever comes out in the United States circles the world and heats it.
06:21Dan, we'll have to leave it there for now.
06:22Thanks so much for your analysis, though, and your expertise.
06:26That is Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity.
