To the editor: In 2009, then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson signed the Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings, confirming that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere threaten public health and welfare. On Tuesday, the EPA proposed repealing those findings. As Hayley Smith and Tony Briscoe’s article pointed out, this would leave industrial polluters free to emit limitless greenhouse gases (“As Trump’s EPA reverses landmark climate policy, California could lead a resistance,” July 29). This is a dangerous move in the wrong direction.
Some would say that clean energy sources are too expensive, though those sources are rapidly becoming more affordable. The real cost of dirty energy lies in the externalities associated with climate change. Unprecedented floods, fires, hurricanes and glacial melting cost billions. Air and water pollution create costly health issues. Global migration because of desertification or flooding causes national and international strife. Beyond the financial costs, of course, the health and well-being of all life on the planet is gravely at risk.
It is inevitable that clean energy will prevail as coal and oil become exceedingly expensive to extract. Why not expedite the move toward non-polluting energy sources now, before we’ve caused greater irreversible damage? Protecting the environment is the supposed job of the EPA, hence the name, so it needs to get back to the important work before it’s too late.
Margaret Baker Davis, Claremont
..
To the editor: The recent article detailing the EPA’s move to reverse the endangerment finding is not just alarming — it speaks of a betrayal. For those of us who have spent decades grappling with the hard scientific truth of climate change, this is perhaps the most devastating environmental policy decision in a generation. And for those in the fossil fuel industry, who knew the risks of carbon emissions as far back as the 1980s and chose deception over responsibility, it is a long-awaited victory.
The endangerment finding has been a legal cornerstone in the fight against climate change, recognizing greenhouse gases as a threat to human health and the environment. To dismantle it is to deliberately ignore science, public health and our children’s future — all in service of profits for polluters.
History will not be kind to those who stood by or cheered this rollback. This is a moment that demands outrage, action and truth, and California must lead the way.
Barry Engelman, Santa Monica
