Last month, the Trump administration proposed revoking the landmark 2009 scientific finding

that's been the basis for EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

If the proposal is finalized, it's almost certain to be challenged in court.

And if the administration succeeds, experts warned that it could jeopardize the health of millions of Americans, especially children.

Pediatrician Deborah Hendrickson is a clinical professor at the University of Nevada Medical School

and the author of The Air They Breathe, a pediatrician on the front lines of climate change.

Dr. Hendrickson, what would be the effect of revoking this finding on the health

of Americans, especially children? Well, if they revoke this finding, it knocks out a major

pillar in our fight against the growing wildfires, rising heat waves, and worsening floods and

hurricanes we've been seeing for the past two decades. And it makes it more likely that all of these problems will continue to get worse in the future.

And failing to stop this process to me is a crime against children, in my view,

because not only are they going to inherit the hotter, more dangerous, and more chaotic world that we're creating,

but they're already more vulnerable to the

growing health hazards of that world. We're already seeing that, things like worsening air pollution,

rising heat waves, and the trauma of natural disasters. And so we're losing many of the gains

we've had over the past century in infant mortality and children's health and welfare.

Explain that. You said that their children are more vulnerable. Explain that.

Yeah. So there's a long list of reasons why children are more vulnerable, but particularly

children under five. And there's three major reasons that we talk about most. One is that

their physiology is different. That's the way their bodies work. So we often

say in pediatrics that children are not just small adults, and that's because you can't just take

the same calculations and assumptions you would for an adult and apply them to a small child.

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