Rollback Politics

When the United States first declared in 2009 that greenhouse gases endanger public health, it quietly redrew the map of environmental governance.

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That determination, made during the Obama presidency, did not just express concern about climate change; it provided the legal backbone for regulating emissions from cars, power plants, and heavy industry.

For more than a decade, it functioned as the hinge on which federal climate policy turned. President Donald Trump's decision to revoke that finding is, therefore, not a routine deregulatory gesture. It is an attempt to remove the hinge itself.

The rollback is being presented as an economic correction. The promise is simpler rules, cheaper vehicles, and relief for manufacturers and consumers. But this framing treats regulation as an abstract burden rather than a response to measurable harm.