An exhaust pipe with smoke emitting from it.

Businesses fear 'chaos' after Trump administration moves to strip EPA’s climate pollution authority

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to revoke its own authority to regulate greenhouse gases, a move that would erase key climate protections and unsettle both legal and corporate frameworks built over the last 15 years.

Michael Copley reports for NPR.

In short:

The EPA is proposing to overturn its 2009 “endangerment finding,” which declared greenhouse gases a threat to public health, forming the legal basis for federal climate rules under the Clean Air Act.
Major corporations, including oil and gas firms, have largely opposed the repeal, citing the need for stable federal standards to guide investments and defend against lawsuits.
Critics argue the rollback ignores scientific consensus on climate risks and could expose fossil fuel companies to more litigation from states and cities seeking damages from climate impacts.

Key quote:

Industry really has accepted the endangerment finding. They have accepted that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are pollutants and that something needs to be done with that." But in the conservative movement, "there's an element out there that just wants to pretend that [climate change] is not a problem."

— Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy at the National Wildlife Federation

Why this matters:

Revoking the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases would dismantle a central legal framework that has guided U.S. climate policy for over a decade. The endangerment finding, first issued in 2009, underpins federal limits on carbon emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other sources. Without it, companies could face a patchwork of state lawsuits and regulations, making long-term planning more costly and uncertain while exposing them to greater liability.

www.npr.org

Credit: Pierre Lemos / Unsplash+

Toxic chemicals and climate change work together to harm fertility across species

In a recent review published in NPJ Emerging Contaminants, researchers examine how toxic chemicals can reduce fertility in both humans and wildlife, and how these effects are worsened by climate change.

In short:

Animals - including insects, fish, reptiles, birds, humans, and other mammals - are constantly simultaneously exposed to synthetic chemicals and the impacts of climate change, including rising temperatures.
Both of these stressors can harm fertility, and many of the impacts found are similar across species, such as effects on sperm and eggs.
The stress caused by these exposures also impacts overall health, harming animals’ ability to adapt to a changing environment and worsening global biodiversity loss.

Key quote:

“To build a sustainable future, we must recognize that chemicals, once released, don’t simply disappear. Instead, they contribute to the larger issue of driving humanity towards the exceedance of planetary boundaries when considered in combination with climate change and other planetary-level impacts.”

Why this matters:

While climate change and toxic endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are both individually well-established as health threats, few studies have examined the implications of the widespread simultaneous exposure experienced by humans and wildlife. Many EDCs can also impact health across multiple generations, meaning their harm continues long after the original exposure. To better tackle the issue of EDCs, the authors of this study emphasize the need for strong regulations that address chemicals by class, rather than individually.

Related EHN coverage:

Declining PFAS levels in seabird eggs reflect impact of regulatory action
Op-ed: A stalled global plastic treaty threatens our future fertility (written by two of the lead authors of the above study)

More resources:

ChemTrust: Wildlife and the environment – Endocrine disruptors
Stockholm Resilience Center: Planetary Boundaries: The safe operating space for humanity

Brander, S. et al. (2026). Impacts of environmental stressors on fertility and fecundity across taxa, with implications for planetary health. NPJ Emerging Contaminants.

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