EPA Sabotage: It’s Not Just The Environment that Will Suffer; The Economy Will, Too

Note: This article was originally shared in SACE’s free newsletter, “Wired In,” which includes relevant articles, media clips, and actions to take. Join us to receive Wired In once a month in your inbox. 

July has been brutal, as the Southeast continues to sizzle under a stagnant heat dome, families still struggle to recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and communities reel from the recent catastrophic flash flooding in Texas and North Carolina. Yet in the face of this mounting climate crisis, the current Administration has launched an unprecedented assault on the environmental protections that help keep Americans safe.

This week, the new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Trump Administration moved to repeal the 16-year-old scientific finding that greenhouse gas pollution and emissions from power plants, the oil, gas, and coal industries, and vehicle emissions endanger public health and welfare. Without this endangerment finding, the EPA will be forced to abandon its responsibility to set limits on the pollution that’s driving more frequent and severe heat waves, floods, and storms.

The EPA has one job: to protect the people and places we love — our families, our communities, our children’s future. It defies logic and common sense to remove the foundational pillars of our pollution rules precisely when climate impacts are accelerating and we need protections and proactive solutions the most. Simultaneously, the Administration is also recklessly slashing funding and staffing at NOAA, the agency responsible for helping us prepare for disasters, and FEMA, the agency responsible for helping us recover from disasters.

The Administration is gaslighting Americans by telling us that climate disruption isn’t a threat when we can see with our own eyes the parade of horribles of repeating record-breaking climate disasters. 2024 was the hottest year on record by a wide margin, flash flood warnings in 2025 have already exceeded previous records, and American families — from Texas flood victims to Southeast hurricane survivors — are paying the price with their lives, homes, and livelihoods.

Clinging to fossil fuels is economic sabotage

So who benefits? In attempting to justify these actions, the EPA political leadership claims eliminating regulation saves industries money — namely oil, gas, and coal companies. But what they don’t share is the enormous costs paid by the American public. The number of billion-dollar weather and climate disasters has skyrocketed, with the last ten years accounting for nearly half of the costs of such disasters over the entire 44-year period that records have been kept.

The Administration’s economic justification is backwards. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres remarked this month, fossil fuels are running out of road. Just follow the money:

• $2 trillion went into clean energy last year globally, which is $800 billion more than fossil fuels, up almost 70% in ten years.
• New data from the International Renewable Energy Agency shows that solar, not so long ago four times the cost of fossil fuels, is now 41% cheaper than the least expensive fossil fuel alternative. Wind energy is 53% cheaper.
• Over 90% of new worldwide renewables brought online in 2024 produced electricity for less than the cheapest new fossil fuel alternative.

Over the past two years, the Southeast U.S. alone announced more than $73 billion in private investment in the clean energy industry supply chain, and more than 92,000 new clean energy jobs. However, the Administration also passed the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill [sic] this month, essentially eliminating the tax credits and clean energy programs that spurred this economic growth in the Southeast and helped American families reduce their energy bills and fossil fuel dependence.

As Guterres warned, “Countries that cling to fossil fuels are not protecting their economies— they are sabotaging them. Driving up costs. Undermining competitiveness. Locking in stranded assets. And missing the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century.”

Market forces are driving the shift to clean energy. This is also a shift in possibility. We don’t have to accept this Administration’s actions that protect fossil fuel profits over people. States, cities, and communities can step up to fill the void — advancing clean energy, strengthening resilience, and proving that protecting our climate and our health drives economic opportunity. But together, we must also demand accountability, support leaders who prioritize our wellbeing over polluter profits, and build the sustainable future our families deserve.

In the next few days, we’ll share more ways you can take action to tell the EPA to protect, not gut, the rules that limit pollution. Here are other steps you can take now:

• Speak up: Tell EPA administrators to protect clean air regulations, not gut them, by adding your name to these two actions: 1) protect limits on power plant pollution, and 2) protect mercury and air toxic standards.
• Be prepared: Check out Grist’s Disaster 101 guide for tips on extreme weather preparation and recovery, and the Yale Climate Connections’ guide to extreme heat.
• Join Us: Together, the Clean Energy Generation is gaining momentum and taking action — because the future we envision protects the people and places we love.

To view the entire July “Wired In” newsletter, click here. 

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