All Predictions Wrong

All Predictions Wrong

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All Predictions Wrong
All Predictions Wrong
Both left and right are wrong about Trump’s “endangerment finding”

Both left and right are wrong about Trump’s “endangerment finding”

OMG they changed the wording of a federal regulation!

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Gregg Easterbrook
Jul 30, 2025
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All Predictions Wrong
All Predictions Wrong
Both left and right are wrong about Trump’s “endangerment finding”
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Note to readers: normally All Predictions Wrong publishes on Friday. Because of news events – the decision was announced today – am publishing early.

The Trump Administration just overturned an EPA decision from the Obama Administration – effectively repealing the “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases threaten public health.

This was treated as a four-alarm fire in the mainstream media. The New York Times put the story at the top of page one (image nearby).

The decision may trigger yet another round of exaggerations from left and right: one claiming repeal will cause a climate doomsday, the other claiming repeal will lead to vast increase in economic growth.

Neither will happen. Both represent the sort of uncontrolled overstatement that Internet alarmists, talking heads and political fundraisers want to hear.

This essay looks at what the “endangerment finding” really is, and why extremists on both sides can profit by embellishing its significance -- or simply lying about it.

We’ll also dissect the New York Times’s role in misrepresenting the subject. Just as it is impossible to criticize Donald Trump too much, it is impossible to criticize the New York Times too much.

group of people standing near trees
Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

The number stands for 1.5 C, a target for limiting global warming.

Today’s New York Times lead story attributes to an officer of an environmental NGO the statement, “Auto-emissions rules being rescinded were projected to prevent 7 billion metric tons of emissions from entering the atmosphere.”

Seven billion tons: enormous! Or not, when the mass of the atmosphere, about 5.5 quadrillion tons -- 5,500,000,000,000,000 tons -- is taken into consideration.

The statement doesn’t spelled out over what period the 7 billion tons would be reduced. Probably 30 years, since when the Biden White House announced the electric-car mandate last spring, it said the mandate, grounded in the “endangerment finding,” would reduce carbon dioxide into the air by 7.2 billion tons by 2055.

Wouldn’t it be swell if the New York Times placed this number into context.

Through the next 30 years, 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide represents roughly one-half of one percent of expected global emissions.

Every little bit matters – you’d rather have a one-half of one percent raise than no raise at all. But it’s impossible to believe a one-half of one percent reduction spread over 30 years will have meaningful impact on human health. This is the new EPA’s logic for overturning the rule – which you’d never know from the New York Times.

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