Environmental groups scramble as Trump dismantles climate rules in second term
The president’s aggressive rollbacks have left major green nonprofits understaffed, under-funded, and racing to defend decades of environmental protections.
Robin Bravender reports for E&E News.
In short:
- The White House has moved to void the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's climate “endangerment finding,” gut Biden-era clean-energy incentives, and shrink agency staffs that enforce regulations.
- Donations to stalwarts like Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace have fallen, forcing layoffs even as legal costs and workload skyrocket.
- With Congress and agencies aligned against them, groups are triaging cases and pinning hopes on a conservative-leaning court system that has already limited nationwide injunctions.
Key quote:
“We just lost a decade’s worth of work under the Trump administration and we’re in the process of losing more as he guts federal agencies and they go after rewriting bedrock environmental laws."
— Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth
Why this matters:
When EPA staff are fired and pollution limits are loosened, soot and ozone climb, pushing asthma rates higher in cities and choking crops in farm states. Cutting clean-energy tax breaks can stall wind-farm deals and strand factory jobs that anchor rural towns. Meanwhile, big emitters gain breathing room to expand, sending greenhouse gases skyward just as extreme heat, floods, and wildfires hit new records. Weaker federal oversight also shifts costs onto states and local health departments already stretched by rising emergency calls. The longer safeguards stay off the books, the harder and pricier it will be to rebuild them — and the more communities will bear the burden.
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