Hello, everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

We're talking climate news today, which is also about federal policy and consumer choice.

The Trump administration recently struck down a policy that's known as the endangerment finding.

That was the EPA's 2009 official finding that greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health.

Now, that endangerment finding has served as the legal bedrock for federal emissions regulations for cars, trucks, power plants, you name it.

Now, my colleague Amy Scott, is here to make us smart about what the repealing of the endangerment

finding means for the economy, the environment, and us.

She's the host of Marketplace's Climate Solutions podcast, How We Survive, and No Stranger to Make Me Smart. Welcome back, Amy.

Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here.

Now, you have been on the climate beat for quite some time now. What was your reaction when you heard that the endangerment finding had been struck down?

Well, honestly, I was not surprised.

The Trump administration has been laying the groundwork for this, basically since he returned to office.

On his first day in the second term, President Trump signed an executive order, basically setting this in motion.

But, you know, I think like anyone who cares about the planet, I do find it alarming that the administration continues to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus that human-driven climate change is a threat to human health and safety. I think, you know, people can

reasonably disagree about what kinds of regulations are appropriate in the face of the climate

crisis, but the administration continues to really push a fringe view that climate change just

isn't a big enough deal to justify the costs of transitioning to renewable energy sources.

And this repeal of the endangerment finding is really just the latest rollback.

You know, Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement,

as well as the global treaty that led to that agreement, the UN Framework Convention on Climate

Change. It's gutted or proposed gutting many different pollution and energy efficiency

regulations. It's pulled back on investments in wind and solar energy and aggressively

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