Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Even as a journalist
Speaker 1: who spends a lot of time following the news, it
Speaker 1: can be hard to keep track of everything the Trump
Speaker 1: administration is doing on any given day. Tonight, the US
Speaker 1: and China and trade talks in Stockholm a waiting for
Speaker 1: US take July twenty nights, late summer, usually a sleepy
Speaker 1: time for news.
Speaker 2: I think six consecutive days of old time highs for
Speaker 2: the US anquity market as fenche.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of headlines to sift through that day,
Speaker 1: but there's one in particular that got climate journalists perking up.
Speaker 3: EPA Administrator Lee Zelden says the agency wants to hear
Speaker 3: from people to finalize a regulation that proposes to rescind
Speaker 3: the Endangerment Finding, and.
Speaker 4: If finalized, today's announcement would amount to the largest de
Speaker 4: regulatory action in the history of the United States.
Speaker 1: That's Lee Zelden, the EPA administrator, proposing to revoke the
Speaker 1: Dangerment Finding, a rule that has formed the bedrock of
Speaker 1: environmental regulation in the US since two thousand and nine.
Speaker 3: It's basically saying greenhouse gas emissions do pose a threat
Speaker 3: to human health and giving EPA legal authority to actually
Speaker 3: regulate specifically greenhouse gas pollutions.
Speaker 1: That's my colleague Bloomberg reporter Zara Hirg.
Speaker 2: What it does is it binds a really vast, global,
Speaker 2: century scale amount of scientific research to law.
Speaker 1: And that's Eric Rosten, another climate reporter for Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: And says that this is a problem and it'll affect
Speaker 2: human health, and therefore we need to create policies that
Speaker 2: will prevent harm that we know is probably coming.
Speaker 1: Zara and Eric say the EPA's proposal to reverse the
Speaker 1: finding was a huge deal. The agency claimed the rollback
Speaker 1: could save more than fifty four billion dollars in annually
Speaker 1: by essentially undoing greenhouse gas emissions regulations. And that proposal
Speaker 1: is just one action that the Trump administration has taken
Speaker 1: to undercut the work that government agencies do to address pollution,
Speaker 1: climate change, disaster mitigation, and more. Zara says it's part
Speaker 1: of a broader attack on the scientific establishment.
Speaker 3: The Union of Concerned Scientists did itally, and they looked
Speaker 3: at anti science actions total and they found around or
Speaker 3: at least four hundred just in the first six months,
Speaker 3: which was more than the entire total for the first
Speaker 3: Trump administration.
Speaker 1: When you look at climate science alone, the actions the
Speaker 1: administration has taken have impacted at least half a dozen
Speaker 1: agencies and disrupted billions of dollars in funding.
Speaker 3: To conclude everything from firing of scientists putting them on
Speaker 3: administrative leave, as well as canceling programs or grants, or
Speaker 3: taking down information from the web or reconsidering policies.
Speaker 1: The Trump administration has said that quote, agencies are refocusing
Speaker 1: on their core missions and shifting away from ideological activism unquote.
Speaker 1: The EPA has said environmental deregulation will create jobs and
Speaker 1: save Americans billions of dollars. But Zara and Eric's reporting
Speaker 1: tells a different story.
Speaker 3: I'll say that you're sort of hearing two different things
Speaker 3: from them. Often the economy is invoked when they're talking
Speaker 3: about this stuff, and it is sort of framed under,
Speaker 3: we do want to save money. But then you're also
Speaker 3: just hearing from EPA's administrator Lee Zelden or Energy Secretary
Speaker 3: Chris Wright, just a very clear condemnation in questioning of
Speaker 3: climate science and people that work in climate.
Speaker 1: And while these anti climate actions are expected to have
Speaker 1: profound economic impacts, they're not necessarily the ones the administration
Speaker 1: is touting they could slow GDP growth and disaster prone states,
Speaker 1: which could also impact national GDP growth. They could make
Speaker 1: it harder to prepare for extreme weather events, which have
Speaker 1: cost the global economy and estimated two point eight trillion
Speaker 1: dollars over the past two decades. It's hard to put
Speaker 1: a price on future disasters, but the cost to green
Speaker 1: energy projects is already quantifiable. In the first half of
Speaker 1: this year, twenty two billion dollars worth of green projects
Speaker 1: have been canceled.
Speaker 2: Once you start peeling back the impacts of climate change,
Speaker 2: it's a drag on the whole economy.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News Today on the show, breaking down the Trump
Speaker 1: Administration's war on climate science, one agency at a time,
Speaker 1: and calculating the impact you could have for decades to come.
Speaker 1: Zarahirjee is a climate reporter for Bloomberg. She's been closely
Speaker 1: tracking the Trump administration attacks on climate science since President
Speaker 1: Trump's inauguration in January.
Speaker 3: This administration is trying to pull back on a lot
Speaker 3: of climate policy all at once, and it's doing it
Speaker 3: in a lot of different ways.
Speaker 1: In just a few months, the Trump administration has cut funding,
Speaker 1: canceled grants, and fired workers at an alphabet soup of
Speaker 1: federal agencies, the EPA, FEMA, NOAH, the CDC, NASA, the DOI,
Speaker 1: and the DOE. They all handle aspects of the way
Speaker 1: the US anticipates, mitigates, tracks, and response to climate change
Speaker 1: in natural disasters at a time when climate related catastrophes
Speaker 1: are getting more intense and more expensive to deal with.
Speaker 2: To cite a prominent example is like last September a
Speaker 2: year ago, a hurricane came to the mountains of western
Speaker 2: North Carolina.
Speaker 1: That's climate reporter Eric Roston.
Speaker 2: And in December, two or three months after the storm,
Speaker 2: the state of North Carolina put the damage estimate like
Speaker 2: fifty nine billion dollars. So, like, that's fifty nine billion dollars.
Speaker 2: Is that somebody's going to pay for by building new things,
Speaker 2: or that nobody's going to pay for and people will
Speaker 2: move or not build back or find new jobs.
Speaker 1: As catastrophes get more expensive, the administration is making big
Speaker 1: changes to the organizations that deal with them most directly.
Speaker 1: Some of the biggest changes have come for the Environmental
Speaker 1: Protection Agency, led by Lee Zelden, the former New York
Speaker 1: congressman's history includes voting against environmental legislation, and Zara says,
Speaker 1: perhaps unsurprisingly, Zelden has been pushing the EPA to take
Speaker 1: some new positions.
Speaker 3: We're used to thinking about the EPA as this key
Speaker 3: environmental regulatory agency, and instead, under Zelden's lead, they're really
Speaker 3: pushing quite openly a deregulatory approach.
Speaker 1: In March, Zelden announced dozens of rollbacks to regulation.
Speaker 4: Agency is initiating thirty one historic actions to fulfill President
Speaker 4: Trump's promise to unleash American energy, revitalize our auto industry,
Speaker 4: restore the rule of law, and give power back to
Speaker 4: the States.
Speaker 1: Then in July, Zelden announced that the EPA would also
Speaker 1: try to reverse the landmark endangerment finding, which we talked
Speaker 1: about earlier. Zelden and the EPA haven't officially revoked the rule,
Speaker 1: but Zara says the fact that it's even on the
Speaker 1: table says a lot about Zelden's priorities.
Speaker 3: They're also looking at reconsidering car emission standards, power plant
Speaker 3: pollution rules, facilities having to report on some of their emissions,
Speaker 3: and the.
Speaker 1: New direction for the EPA goes beyond deregulation.
Speaker 3: They announced in July that they're moving to close their
Speaker 3: Office of Research and Development, which is like their key
Speaker 3: research office that's looking at future environmental.
Speaker 1: Risks, and like many other federal agencies, they're bleeding staff.
Speaker 3: Over two thousand EPA staff have taken kind of the
Speaker 3: deferral program or this incentive program, which means that they
Speaker 3: haven't been working, but they've been paid for a couple
Speaker 3: months and will eventually leave the agency.
Speaker 1: Zara says these changes to the EPA could leave permanent scars.
Speaker 3: It might not all be super visible to someone on
Speaker 3: the ground right now, but in the coming months, in
Speaker 3: the coming years, as experts leave, as things stop showing
Speaker 3: up on the website. It's not just the protections that
Speaker 3: we've come to expect that exists today, but the people
Speaker 3: looking for what is the next thing that we need
Speaker 3: to be worried about, and we will be caught potentially
Speaker 3: flat footed with whatever the next future threat is.
Speaker 1: It's a similar story at FEMA, the agency that prepares
Speaker 1: for and responds to disasters like floods, fires, and hurricanes.
Speaker 3: People most know FEMA for when a major disaster happens,
Speaker 3: they can come on the ground and help. Then they
Speaker 3: can provide funding, and we've already started to see that
Speaker 3: actual disaster aid funding has been less than in previous
Speaker 3: years when they have simply stopped providing hazard mitigation, something
Speaker 3: that used to just be an automatic, Yes, extra money
Speaker 3: to help states.
Speaker 1: Then there are the funding and staff and cuts that
Speaker 1: affect the scientists who help predict disasters before they happen,
Speaker 1: the scientists at NOAH.
Speaker 3: It is a very kind of immediate impact that people
Speaker 3: can see because these are meteorologists that are tracking to
Speaker 3: see if there's a tornado and helping put out tornado alerts,
Speaker 3: for example, or if there's a hurricane, or if there's
Speaker 3: a flood. Because of this, there's actually been a lot
Speaker 3: of response, a lot of criticism. Members of Congress have
Speaker 3: spoken up, and so now actually the agency is hiring back.
Speaker 1: Then there's the Department of the Interior and the Department
Speaker 1: of Energy. Grant programs, permitting and tax incentives for clean
Speaker 1: energy projects typically run through these agencies. Now, previously approved
Speaker 1: projects are finding that their permits or their funding are
Speaker 1: in peril.
Speaker 3: So you have a lot of companies in the space
Speaker 3: that are scrambling because they thought they had projects, they
Speaker 3: thought they had tax incentives, that they would be able
Speaker 3: to use, and now those are disappearing.
Speaker 1: And beyond what's been lost at the DOE, Eric says
Speaker 1: he's also been paying close attention to what kind of
Speaker 1: climate related research is being done there.
Speaker 2: The Department of Energy issued a report by five scientists
Speaker 2: who are known within the scientific community for being skeptics
Speaker 2: of the I only want to call it mainstream. It's
Speaker 2: just of the science.
Speaker 1: Their report was published in July, and it's said global
Speaker 1: warming projections are exaggerated, that some policies to reduce emissions
Speaker 1: may do more harm than good, and.
Speaker 2: Was immediately sort of swarmed by enormous amounts of scientific scrutiny.
Speaker 1: In early September, a group of eighty five scientists published
Speaker 1: a four hundred page rebuttal to the DOE report, writing
Speaker 1: that the scientists behind it appeared to have been quote
Speaker 1: personally recruited by the Secretary of Energy to advance a
Speaker 1: particular viewpoint favored by DOE leadership. However, contested its findings.
Speaker 1: The paper is already shaping environmental policy. It came out
Speaker 1: within a week of the Trump administration announcing they'd be
Speaker 1: reconsidering the endangerment finding, and Zara says it helped the
Speaker 1: administration bolster its argument.
Speaker 3: This is them putting out a report with effectively alternative science.
Speaker 3: It's not just pulling back on the work, but they're
Speaker 3: kind of pushing an alternative narrative which goes a step beyond.
Speaker 1: After the break, unpacking the economic and human consequences of
Speaker 1: slash and climate funding and how reversing course on green
Speaker 1: investments could undermine the US on the global stage. Seing
Speaker 1: the economic impacts of the Trump administration's many attacks on
Speaker 1: climate science is tricky. How do you account for the
Speaker 1: costs of a disaster that hasn't happened yet. How do
Speaker 1: you model how more pollution could lead to higher spending
Speaker 1: on healthcare?
Speaker 2: Climate change. There's obviously a ton of ways to talk
Speaker 2: about it, but an important way is that souped and nuts,
Speaker 2: it's an economic problem.
Speaker 1: Climate reporter Eric Roston again on the front end.
Speaker 2: It's an economic problem because the prices of incumbent energy
Speaker 2: don't really match up with the cost on society. Economists
Speaker 2: call that an externality, a cost that society absorbs but
Speaker 2: that producers don't.
Speaker 1: Halting climate science research also has other more direct economic
Speaker 1: impacts on private companies. Like companies that work on climate
Speaker 1: projects supported by federal funding or that rely on federal
Speaker 1: climate data to inform their business strategy. Take the National
Speaker 1: Climate Assessment as an example.
Speaker 2: This is a document that companies talk about earnings calls.
Speaker 1: Chipotle and Marriott and Travelers have all cited the NCAA
Speaker 1: in public disclosures, But in April, the administration dismissed hundreds
Speaker 1: of outside scientists who had volunteered their time to write
Speaker 1: the next version of the report, and the government website
Speaker 1: hosting past reports has been taken down.
Speaker 2: People just want to make good decisions and taking away
Speaker 2: scientific information that is paid for by the public and
Speaker 2: presented to the public that is increasingly rare. People have
Speaker 2: come to expect it because they've come to realize that
Speaker 2: they need it.
Speaker 1: Climate reporter Zarahirji says that some companies have been particularly
Speaker 1: vocal about how important it is for the government to
Speaker 1: continue to invest in climate science.
Speaker 3: Rivian, which is this electric vehicle company, was among those
Speaker 3: that had spoken up at this four day hearing in August.
Speaker 1: That was a hearing over the proposed Endangerment finding reversal.
Speaker 3: Offering comments about the move to reconsider the endangerment finding,
Speaker 3: and they specifically were speaking out against it and about
Speaker 3: the harms that could have for the automotive industry and
Speaker 3: consumers writ large. I mean, you just think about the
Speaker 3: regulatory environment. Businesses often thrive and having a stable regulatory environment,
Speaker 3: So any dramatic or shift changes to that can just
Speaker 3: be rough, especially if that leads to states having their
Speaker 3: own rules and then they're dealing with an environment where
Speaker 3: they have fifty different rules to deal with rather than
Speaker 3: when they just had one federal environment. And I think,
Speaker 3: especially when you're hearing from the world of clean energy,
Speaker 3: clean energy tech, solar companies, wing companies, they've been specifically
Speaker 3: targeted by this administration. I mean, the impacts have been
Speaker 3: pretty dramatic, and those companies are speaking.
Speaker 1: Out, speaking out, and sometimes taking legal action. The energy
Speaker 1: firm orsted along with the states of Rhode Island, and
Speaker 1: it sued the Trump administration for halting a wind farm
Speaker 1: project that was nearly complete.
Speaker 3: So these effects are real and they're trickling down, and
Speaker 3: I think we'll start to hear more too as more
Speaker 3: of these changes come down.
Speaker 1: If the US stops investing in these spaces, how might
Speaker 1: the country fall behind on the global stage? And who
Speaker 1: is best positioned to take the lead here.
Speaker 2: China already owns most of the new economy. You just
Speaker 2: look at any clean energy technology or like part for
Speaker 2: a technology in China provides the world with probably you know,
Speaker 2: it's insane, like fifty to eighty percent of it. So
Speaker 2: in a lot of ways, we're already losing. And if
Speaker 2: you take a long view, the world we live in
Speaker 2: has grown and been sustained by decades of us spending
Speaker 2: more money in science than just about anybody else. It's
Speaker 2: not clear who was going to step forward and replenish
Speaker 2: that in other countries that do invest in this stuff
Speaker 2: may not also be democratic countries, and therefore the science
Speaker 2: doesn't come along with a mandate for transparency.
Speaker 3: One of the biggest places to stand to benefit, and
Speaker 3: we've heard this from our sources, is China as well
Speaker 3: as potentially Europe. They may have engineering advancements or kind
Speaker 3: of business advancements and spaces where we're just not operating
Speaker 3: or the companies don't have the space for. But they're
Speaker 3: also looking to poach literally the experts who work here.
Speaker 3: This is something where we're going to start seeing in
Speaker 3: the coming years who may benefit because they're trying to
Speaker 3: grab up all this talent that's sort of being left
Speaker 3: on the floor when we have all of these funding
Speaker 3: cuts and these staffing cuts.
Speaker 1: And while so much of the US government's climate science
Speaker 1: work has been reversed in just a matter of months,
Speaker 1: Zara says rebuilding will take much longer.
Speaker 3: I don't think this administration has been shy about this,
Speaker 3: but I think there's a sense that maybe the private
Speaker 3: sector other people will step up. And the reality is
Speaker 3: from me talking to local emergency managers, is if the
Speaker 3: federal governments support for their efforts go away, it's just
Speaker 3: not going to happen. No one's actually going to step in.
Speaker 3: There have been a lot of efforts, specifically in climate
Speaker 3: where if the Trump administration has ended a rapport, or
Speaker 3: ended a program or ended a data set, some of
Speaker 3: those people are trying to find ways where within civil
Speaker 3: society they can resurrect it in some way. But not
Speaker 3: everything will be resurrected, and we're still waiting to see
Speaker 3: what's actually going to be around at the end of
Speaker 3: the four years.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
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