Every salesman worth his commission check knows that his greatest ally is urgency. If the customers need something now, they are often willing to pay more for it or purchase it on impulse.
Absent a pressing need, there are many strategies to build that sense of urgency, like saying that supplies are limited or offering a special price for those who buy today.
In such a situation, controlling the flow of information through volume, intimidation, isolation or other means is vital. However, while the urgency tactic is helpful, it must be used sparingly. As soon as the would-be buyer realizes that immediate action is unnecessary, the sales effort evaporates.
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Deflating the Environmental Protection Agency
Like the salesman, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bureaucrats know that a sense of urgency is crucial to their operation. This is especially true in the mythical “global climate change” realm.
It may be that the climate change movement is suffering from overexposure. One of the many actions that President Trump took in the hours after his January 20, 2025, inauguration was to sign an Executive Order titled Unleashing American Energy. In it, he ordered the EPA Administrator to make recommendations to bring the Agency’s practice into line with the administration’s stated goals.
Former Congressman Lee Zeldin assumed the Administrator’s position on January 29. According to a report in the February 26 issue of The Washington Post, Mr. Zeldin “privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change.” Within the EPA, the document that enshrined the policy Mr. Zeldin is revoking is known as the “endangerment finding.”
A bit of background is needed to explain the importance of this document, as it is virtually unknown outside of the Agency.
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Is the Danger Real?
Back in the seventies, global climate change had a different name—global cooling. The doomsayers shrieked that the ozone layer was thinning because aerosol cans released chlorofluorocarbons. Without sufficient ozone in the upper atmosphere, much of the earth’s warmth would escape into outer space. The planet itself would grow ever cooler, and eventually, humanity would be unable to bear the unremitting cold.
The so-called experts assured the public that this would happen by the year 2000 without immediate action.
The problem was that global cooling didn’t occur. In fact, many people noticed that the winters were getting slightly less severe. So, about 1985, experts renamed the threat, and the movement spawned the phrase “global warming.”
This time, the environmentalists moaned that “greenhouse gases” (GHG) like carbon dioxide and methane made the upper atmosphere too thick. Therefore, the earth would get steadily warmer. However, warmth by itself was not enough to inspire panic. After all, millions of northerners go south each winter in search of warmer temperatures. So, the experts embellished the story by arguing that an increase of only a couple of degrees would cause the global ice caps to melt. That would, in turn, cause the oceans to rise, causing coastal areas to diminish or even disappear.
However, that calamity didn’t happen either. After twenty years of dire predictions, the rising oceans hadn’t swallowed Manhattan, Miami or New Orleans. So, with the coming of the new millennium, the climate peril got another new name: global climate change. This time, the experts didn’t provide an overall narrative. They just pointed to every extreme weather event as proof that the climate was rebelling against humanity.
Excessive Executive Power
However, after almost forty years of predicting disaster, the EPA began to resemble Aesop’s “Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Increasing numbers of citizens ignored its dicta.
Thus, as the first anniversary of his inauguration neared, President Barack Obama decided to put some teeth into the movement. On December 7, 2009, the EPA, with the President’s approval, published its conclusion that “greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endanger both the public health and the environment for current and future generations.”
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Armed with this “endangerment finding,” the EPA enjoyed official permission to give its fight against climate change the power of law. So, for fifteen years, the Agency has happily regulated anything that it decided was a “greenhouse gas.” Once enshrined in the Federal Record, its opinions were rarely challenged and almost never overturned.
Crying Out Their Pain
After President Trump’s actions, the leftists bemoan the loss of another bit of the power they have over the rest of the nation. The aforementioned Washington Post article warned, “By repealing the endangerment finding, the Trump administration would be taking one of its most consequential steps yet to derail federal climate efforts.”
The Forum of an organization called American Action warns that, “repealing the endangerment finding would likely create chaos for U.S. climate policy, as it would make it much easier to repeal the existing EPA GHG regulations, which would subject EPA to legal challenges and produce increasing policy uncertainty for businesses.”
A “future-focused” law firm called Akin predicts rough legal seas should the finding be revoked. “[A]ny decision against the findings would be immediately challenged in court. The findings have been upheld against various legal challenges over the years, with the Supreme Court declining to hear challenges to it as recently as December 11, 2023.”
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is a solid supporter of the findings. They caution that “The reported recommendation to overturn a 2009 regulatory finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, if realized, will harm communities, public health, and wildlife across the country.” More specifically, the NWF warns that “greenhouse gases directly harm public health and the environment by fueling a range of climate change-associated impacts such as increasing formation of asthma-inducing ozone pollution, disease outbreaks, heat-related morbidity and mortality, extreme weather events, and more.”
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Political Liabilities?
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), President Trump’s actions could cause future political problems. Relying on a decade-old Quinnipiac University poll and Yale University’s Program on Climate Communication, it predicts disaster should the President continue on this tack.
“Polling has repeatedly shown that most Americans think that climate change is happening and consider it to be a serious problem. A majority of Americans think that the United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and that our government should do more to address climate change. Recent surveys show majorities of Trump voters support taxing and/or regulating climate pollution, upholding or strengthening current climate change policies, or requiring U.S. companies to reduce carbon pollution.”
Concealing the Truth
One unfortunate aspect of the whole process is that Americans without a scientific background have no idea who to believe. During their decades of ascendency, environmental activist organizations tightly controlled the debate. Opposing voices, even those that came from other scientists, were silenced by a left-wing press. It publically branded the few that managed to gain a hearing as crackpots or charlatans. The price of pursuing a scientific career was acquiescence. So, as the climate change movement gained reams and volumes of research studies that buttressed their main points, they gradually lost their credibility.
However, no one can maintain such a façade indefinitely. Sooner or later, experience will triumph over theory. However, without the energetic debate necessary for real scientific advancement, no one can distinguish between truth and falsehood until experience teaches its hard lessons.
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