One overcast week in January, Government Relations Director Andrew Condia, Research Associate Dominick Dusseau, and I found ourselves driving along the banks of the Mississippi River. Our road trip took us through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas to speak with leaders in four small towns about their climate risk. Representing Woodwell’s Just Access program, we wanted to understand what information communities most need to help their towns envision a thriving future in the face of climate change.
The small towns of the Mississippi are interconnected in the challenges they’re facing, but also in their resolve. They are looking for solutions that will help them preserve their way of life, while readying their communities for a changed future. Like patchwork squares in a quilt, our conversations in each town formed a larger pattern: America’s small towns want to adapt. They just need the resources to do so.
Wilmot, Arkansas: population 400
We arrived in Wilmot around midday and were welcomed by Mayor Carolyn Harris, her team, and a spread of baked chicken, green beans with ham, rolls, sweet tea, and her special-recipe salad.
“When I say, ‘let’s do lunch’, we do lunch,” says Harris.
Wilmot’s pink-fronted town hall sits on the old main street facing Lake Enterprise, next to faded or abandoned buildings. Main Street used to have two movie theaters, a drug store, and a grocery, all of which shuttered as the population declined. The town is surrounded by farms, and agriculture drives the economy, though not as much as it used to.
This is a pattern across the Delta. Rural towns have shrunk dramatically over the years as the small family farm became a much harder economic proposition. According to Water Operator Theodis Kitchen, a fourth-generation resident, Wilmot is at its lowest population in decades.
The four communities we visited that week are all members of the DRIVE program, an initiative at the University of Memphis that helps Delta region towns pursue economic revitalization on their own terms. Mayor Harris is envisioning a new economy for Wilmot that will attract newcomers to the town through its recreation opportunities; the natural lands around Lake Enterprise offer fishing, hunting, and camping. But the impacts of climate change could complicate that picture.
The challenge, Water Operator Apprentice Derrick Jackson points out, is pollution from surrounding farms. Industrial agriculture makes common use of pesticides and defoliant sprays, and when it rains or floods, those chemicals travel. While this is already a concern, climate change could make it worse as more extreme floods or wildfires carry harmful chemicals into new areas.
“We would like to know the risk,” says Harris.
Jackson says that kind of information will help more than just Wilmot. Climate change is a shared burden here in the Upper Delta.
“[Climate change] doesn’t just affect this town, you know,” says Jackson. “It goes all the way down [Highway] 165. Pretty much every town has the basics of what we have. So anything that we are able to find that could help us, could help the next towns over.”
Eudora, Arkansas: population 1,700
The next town over is Eudora, Arkansas, led by Mayor Tomeka Butler. Butler assumed office on March 11, 2020. The previous mayor’s assistant introduced her to the office, handed her the keys, and wished her luck.
“I’m looking around like, that’s it? There’s no manual or anything?” says Butler.
Her first day on the job was the day COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. The year that followed, Butler learned quickly that the best way to keep her people safe was to share information and ask for help. Now, she approaches Eudora’s climate challenges in a similar way, joining networks like DRIVE and the Arkansas Black Mayors Association (ABMA) to broaden Eudora’s access to resources.
“I’m not an expert, but I love surrounding myself with the people who are,” says Butler.
Technical expertise on climate adaptation can be hard to come by in towns like Eudora, whose population is largely elderly or aging.
But small towns face the same climate risks as larger municipalities—regardless of whether or not they have the resources to address them. Eudora is the warmest populated area in Arkansas, and heat stroke is a major hazard for outdoor workers during the summer. Flooding also plagues the town.
“Most of the time it doesn’t matter if it’s a little rain or a big rain, particular areas are going to flood, and sadly, these areas are mainly where the elderly people live,” says Butler. “There’s been times where it has rained and I’ve literally had to put people on standby who have boats, because that will be the only way we’ll be able to get to them.”
But Butler tends to focus more on what assets Eudora does have, rather than what they’re lacking. As she drove us through town, pointing out neighbors’ houses that were built over creeks and streets that become impassable during light rain, she told us how the town is making progress because of the networks they’re a part of. Through ABMA, Eudora is participating in a watershed revitalization project, which will help the town abate flooding with green infrastructure. Mutual aid agreements with nearby towns’ fire departments have helped with emergency response. And, with help from a local researcher, the town will be piloting a vertical agriculture system in its old school building.
Woodwell is now also part of Butler’s ever-growing expert network. She hopes information from a risk assessment will inform her plans for a growing Eudora, giving her the information she needs to not only keep her people safe but help them thrive.
“I just be concerned about the people,” says Mayor Butler.
Tunica, Mississippi: population 1,000
With a close-knit community, yearly festivals, and a cheery mural across from town hall welcoming visitors, Tunica, Mississippi resembles what Main Street Program Director Laura Withers calls a “Hallmark movie town.” A few blocks from town hall, there is a central playground with slides and monkey bars. Right now, in the middle of a winter day, it’s pleasantly sunny. In the summer though, the combined heat and humidity make it a dangerous place to play.
“If you want to take your kids to play on the equipment, you can’t. It’s too hot to the touch. Mom cannot stand out there in the dead of summer. It’s too hot,” says Withers. “The bummer is that it’s hottest in the summertime when kids aren’t in school.”
Like much of the region, Tunica struggles with extreme heat. For Withers, whose job involves programming Tunica’s social amenities like the annual Rivergate Festival, extreme heat poses a risk to the features that make the town an inviting place to live.
“When people think about where they want to move or where they want to raise their family, at the end of the day, people want good education, nice parks, you know, quality-of-life type things,” says Withers.
Withers also handles grant-writing for Tunica. She says she’s noticed many applications now place an emphasis on infrastructural sustainability to make sure the money granted represents a long-term investment in the town’s success. Without concrete data on climate risks like flooding or extreme heat, Withers says her applications are not as competitive. For a town of Tunica’s size, grants are an important funding source for municipal projects.
“Anytime you can get the tiniest bit of a crystal ball into what you’re dealing with moving forward, whether it be climate or jobs or the school system or healthcare, whether it be good or bad, you can benefit from it,” says Withers.
Stanton, Tennessee: population 400 and growing
The longer we spent in the region, the more we saw the traditionally agricultural fabric of the Upper Delta interweaving with budding pockets of renewable energy infrastructure.
The uniformity of fallow fields was broken here and there by a towering range of wind turbines or bright rows of solar panels. As we pulled into the town of Stanton, Tennessee, about 50 miles northeast of Memphis, we passed BlueOval City—a 4,000-acre Ford manufacturing facility. The plant was originally established to be a center for electric vehicle manufacturing, but the company has since pulled back those promises, opting instead for “higher-return opportunities” in response to regulatory changes. Ford now plans to manufacture gas-powered trucks there as well as batteries.
Despite the pullback, the plant will still generate a massive influx of people—with some estimates up to 10,000—and accompanying development. Mayor Norman Bauer is trying to navigate the new future it represents.
“That is going to be the economic driver if we let it be, but my intent is for Stanton to grow on its own merit,” says Bauer.
DRIVE cohort members are encouraged to develop tailored solutions to the unique challenges facing their communities. For Stanton, that means getting the town “shovel ready,” as Bauer calls it, with the infrastructure to support a growing population. Stormwater management is top of that list. Flooding is already a concern where a drainage ditch cuts through town and frequently overflows.
“The first of the past dozen 100-year floods was in 1996 and they just kept coming,” says Bauer.
Without an updated land-use plan in place, development could worsen that. And without data on flooding and extreme rainfall risk, it will be much harder for Stanton to develop a plan that carries the town through what the future holds.
“We don’t know how it’s going to change, but we do have to look at the common fact that it is going to change. We do have to have a plan in place. This is one of those things where you can’t be reactionary,” says Bauer.
A message from President & CEO Dr. Max Holmes
As the calendar flips from one year to the next, I find myself reflecting not only on the many challenges faced in 2025, but also on lessons learned during difficult moments further in the past. One such time was more than a decade ago, deep in the Siberian Arctic, when weather threatened to delay the conclusion of a weeks-long research expedition. As I wrote on July 23, 2012:
“I’m sitting on the barge, drinking a cup of coffee, watching snow whip across the Panteleikha River. More than 24 hours of rain and snow have turned the dirt runway in Cherskiy to mud, threatening to delay our trip home (which is supposed to begin later today as we fly from Cherskiy to Yakutsk, and then to Moscow). A delayed flight out of Cherskiy would have many ripple effects (lots of rebooking of flights, hotels, buses, etc.; lots of disappointment as our reunions with family and friends are postponed; and lots of additional expenses).
There are many easier things to do in life than to lead a group of 33 people to the Siberian Arctic, so why do I do this? I’ve been asking myself that question this morning, intertwined with thoughts about missing my 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, and facing the prospect of missing my wife’s 40th birthday.
Fortunately, there is an easy answer: This is the most important thing I can imagine doing. I’ll keep hoping that our flight departs as scheduled this afternoon, but if not, I–and the larger group–will rally and use our extra time here to pry a few more secrets from this remarkable, challenging, critical, and beautiful environment.”
As it turned out, our flight out of Cherskiy was canceled, we had to spend an additional $30,000 on plane tickets, and I missed my wife’s 40th birthday. Experiences like this are not unusual when working in challenging environments such as the Arctic, and Woodwell scientists have long been tested by such obstacles.
Fast forward to 2025 and all of the challenges it brought. And yes, as in 2012, there have been moments when I’ve asked myself that same question:
“Why do I do this?”
My answer remains exactly what it was then:
“This is the most important thing I can imagine doing.”
I know that most Woodwell staff feel the same way. This is hard work, and at times, there are more losses than wins. But it is essential work, and we will continue to forge ahead.
I’m certain that 2026 will bring new challenges, but I am confident that Woodwell Climate Research Center will continue to stand tall, doing our science, using our voice, and staying focused on charting a course toward a positive future, no matter the obstacles in our way.
In fact, we are doing much more than simply holding our own; we are forging ahead. In the coming months, you’ll hear about Woodwell’s new office in Washington, DC; our new scientific impact strategy; and how we are continuing to pursue our highest priorities without being beholden to federal government agendas.
Thank you to all our friends, supporters, collaborators, and partners. This is a true team effort. We wouldn’t be able to continue to stand tall without you.
Onward.
A message from President & CEO Dr. R. Max Holmes
I am writing from Belém, Brazil, a city at the edge of both the Amazon forest and the Atlantic Ocean and host of COP30—the thirtieth annual meeting of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty, what is often referred to as the UN climate conference.
The location of this year’s meeting is significant in multiple ways. The treaty was adopted in Rio de Janeiro, so returning to Brazil is something of a homecoming. And Belém’s location puts particular emphasis on the importance of tropical forests and nature-based climate solutions more broadly.
Woodwell Climate has more than a dozen science and policy experts at COP30 sharing our science, informing negotiations, deepening relationships, and exploring new possibilities. We are advocating for more ambitious climate goals that take into account emissions from permafrost thaw, wildfires, and other ecosystem changes; for equitable, effective finance mechanisms that can get money flowing to the people best positioned to protect tropical forests; for science-based national adaptation plans and indicators that will enable us to track our progress toward global resilience.
It is exciting, even exhilarating, work. And yet, the “30” in COP30 raises uneasy questions. This is the thirtieth time the nations of the world have come together to chart a path toward a just, livable climate future. Why is progress so slow? What can possibly be left to negotiate? Is it all worth the effort?
As these questions were bouncing around in my head, I started to wonder what the originators of the process think of where we are. One of those originators, Kilaparti Ramakrishna (known to many as Rama), was among Woodwell Climate’s first employees and is currently a member of our Board of Directors. So I reached out and asked him. In response, he shared an essay he was working on which began this way:
“When we were drafting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1991–1992, few of us could have imagined that the negotiations we began would still be unfolding three decades later. But we did know that we were creating something designed to last. The Convention was never meant to be a one-off agreement that “solved” climate change; it was conceived as a living framework, a foundation for continuous, evolving cooperation guided by science, equity, and common purpose.”
That is, in itself, a lofty goal. And by that measure, the UNFCCC has been a resounding success. It has weathered numerous, dramatic, often rapid, geopolitical shifts over the past three decades. Particularly now, in an era of rising nationalism around the world, it is remarkable that any multilateral process should persist for so long. It is an enormous testament to the many negotiators and advocates who have held to that vision and worked tirelessly to advance, however incrementally, a truly global framework for addressing climate change.
Obviously, it has not been without setbacks. One front of mind for many right now is the fact that the U.S. has withdrawn—not just once, but twice. And on that note, Rama had another frameshift to offer. Each time the U.S. has stepped back, progress has slowed. There is no denying that. But the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement have continued nonetheless. That is because others have stepped into greater leadership and responsibility, and that makes the process, as a whole, stronger in the long run.
And this is a long run. Climate change is a challenge of unprecedented scope and import. It has been decades in the making, and the consequences will span every aspect of society for decades, if not centuries, to come. The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is a correspondingly unprecedented response that cannot be expected to yield results overnight. It remains the only forum for truly global discourse and collaboration on climate issues, and that is invaluable.
So let’s celebrate that this is the thirtieth COP, acknowledging that progress has been slower than any of us would want but recognizing that we are in a much better place than we would be without the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Let’s also look ahead to COP40, COP50, and even COP60, imagining the world we want in the future and resolving to do everything we possibly can to realize that vision.
That is what keeps me going. That is what keeps Woodwell going. On behalf of all of us, thank you for the privilege of doing this work.
Onward,
On September 19, Woodwell Climate submitted public comment on the U.S. Forest Service’s proposed rulemaking to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, also known as the Roadless Rule. This rule banned logging and the creation of new logging roads in 58 million acres of National forests.
The federal agency’s intent to rescind the Roadless Rule aligns with the presidential Executive Order, “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation” which seeks to remove obstacles to extracting natural resources on public lands. Additionally, the agency claims the repeal of the rule will allow forest managers to remove trees from “overstocked forests” to prevent wildfire and disease.
Woodwell Climate strongly opposes the rescission of the rule, citing the best available science that shows increased roadways and subsequent logging will result in ecological degradation, increased wildfire, and loss of critical carbon stocks.
“The Roadless Rule currently protects millions of acres from extractive activities that would result in ecosystem degradation and increased vulnerability to wildfire,” writes Senior Scientist Rich Birdsey in the comment. “Rescinding the Roadless Rule would harm many public uses of the land, cause significant emissions of greenhouse gases, and destroy critical habitat for many species of wildlife.”
Federal forests have major carbon storage and climate mitigation potential, absorbing approximately 3% of U.S. emissions from fossil fuel burning each year. Mature and old growth forests are responsible for the majority of that, and the Roadless Rule has been instrumental in preventing the logging of these important forests, including the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
“Increased logging is the single greatest threat to these forests and the carbon they hold — and it is the threat we most directly control,” the Woodwell Climate comment states. “As the impacts of climate change become more extreme and damaging, we should prioritize protecting mature and old growth forests on federal lands, not harvesting them.”
Additionally, studies show that road building into previously undisturbed forests actually increases vulnerability to fire. This is because most wildfires are caused by human ignitions which become more common with better access roads. Undisturbed mature and old-growth forest ecosystems are also more resilient to wildfires compared to forests that are actively logged and managed.
Read the full public comment here.
What keeps Woodwell Climate Director of Government Relations, Laura Uttley going day to day?
Uttley leads the Center’s domestic policy advocacy, and it’s been a hard year for domestic policy. In the past, her work has involved building relationships with members of Congress, tracking climate-relevant legislation, and planning Hill visits and briefings with Center scientists. This year, it’s been all that plus an exhausting gauntlet of crisis response, as climate science falls under attack from an antagonistic presidential administration. It is a federal policy landscape that makes advancing climate research, mitigation policy, and adaptation efforts harder than perhaps at any point in U.S. history.
But waiting for easier times is not an option.
Since the start of the new presidential administration in January, federal funding and support infrastructure for science has been slashed, and many laws, court rulings, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations that form the foundation of the U.S.’s climate and environmental policy have been targeted or overturned to make way for an agenda that prioritizes fossil fuels. Protecting as much environmental policy as possible has become an urgent priority for Uttley and the rest of the Government Relations team at Woodwell, but despite the chaos and uncertainty, they aren’t flagging.
“What gets me going on a day to day basis, is that I have a job to do,” says Uttley.
Holding back the floodwaters
At the beginning of the year, Uttley and the Government Relations team were bracing themselves for the new administration to “flood the zone.” The tactic, which involves mounting as many attempts as possible to repeal legislation, cut funding, and stymie regular governmental proceedings in a short timespan, is designed to overwhelm potential opposition and the media.
“It is done very intentionally,” says Uttley. “To distract. To exhaust. To cloud your judgment on things, and get you too focused on one area, so that you’re unaware or unable or too limited in terms of resources to work in a different space.”
And that’s exactly what newly appointed officials did—from pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, to proposing the sale of public lands, to firing staff from key agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), to changing regulation around how the EPA implements signature environmental legislation.
The instinct, Uttley says, for individuals and organizations that care about diversity, the environment, or public funding for science, is to react to everything because every attack feels like a devastating loss. But that is exactly what drains motivation and resources the fastest.
“I don’t have the luxury of outrage right now,” says Uttley.
So she and others have had to stay focused on the most significant policy battles, concentrating resources on the areas most aligned with Woodwell Climate’s mission and expertise.
“You could make the argument that we should be in any number of fights and policy debates,” says Uttley. “But if we go too far afield, the impact of our voice changes in those dialogues that are so core to our mission. Staying focused can be really hard to do when everything feels so deeply important.”
Top Priority: The Endangerment Finding
Among the fights the Center’s Government Relations team has engaged in, protecting the infrastructure of American climate policy has been a chief priority. In July, the administration announced its intent to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which underpins the majority of U.S. climate action. This finding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) affirms that the emission of six greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere— including carbon dioxide and methane— represents a threat to human health and wellbeing, giving the agency authority to regulate them. The decision was based on rigorous science, and was re-affirmed in a 2018 study, led by then-president of Woodwell Climate, Dr. Phil Duffy, who wrote that in the intervening years evidence in support of the finding had only accumulated.
The current administration has attempted to call into question the scientific basis of the finding by releasing a report from the Department of Energy (DOE) that challenges consensus on the damaging impacts of carbon emissions. The suggestion that regulating emissions has caused more harm than the effects of climate change, according to Dave McGlinchey, who served as Woodwell Climate’s Chief of Government Relations between 2016 and 2025, is a blatant dismissal of scientific fact.
“We built an operation here at Woodwell that is very non-partisan, but the idea that the Executive Branch of the U.S. federal government just doesn’t engage with evidence, or moves forward despite clearly contravening evidence, is a real challenge,” says McGlinchey.
It also dismisses the fact that the EPA’s ability to regulate things like tailpipe and power plant emissions has improved air quality for millions of Americans. The finding has made our skies clearer, lungs healthier, and contributed meaningfully to reducing the U.S.’s emissions.
Legal challenges to the proposed repeal began to roll in almost immediately after its announcement, and the opportunity for public comment on the rule was extended to September 22. The Woodwell Climate team developed an organizational comment in support of the Finding to throw more scientific weight behind the efforts to keep it in place.
Climate risk spans political divides
While the political landscape around climate mitigation remains contentious, opportunities to advance resilience projects on the local scale remain. Communities across the political spectrum are feeling the acute impacts of climate change and need information to protect themselves.
“Risk is a bipartisan issue,” says McGlinchey. “Unfortunately, in this country, we have repeated, catastrophic reminders of what climate change impacts look like, so people are attuned to that. They want to understand risk and they want to understand how to become more resilient.“
Andrew Condia, External Affairs Manager, leads the Center’s primary climate adaptation project, Just Access. The initiative connects climate scientists with communities both in the U.S. and around the world to provide assessments of current and future climate risks at no cost to the communities. With a better understanding of how variables like flooding, drought, heatwaves, and fires will impact their communities in the coming years, leaders in municipal governments have been able to have climate-informed conversations about planning, infrastructure, and public health. Even in overwhelmingly conservative areas.
“We work with some Democratic mayors, some Republican mayors, and they are lined up and equally as engaged in the process,” says Condia. “They understand the importance of this information and know that it’s a critical tool to help them as their communities grow and change in the future.”
The sweeping nature of cutbacks on the federal level has meant that municipalities are now one of the only places these conversations are able to move forward.
“I think local governments recognize that in the absence of federal leadership, it’s up to them to step up to make progress on these issues. It’s the only climate action in the country that is really making meaningful progress right now,” says Condia.
Bigger picture, longer term
At higher levels of government, McGlinchey says the current top priority is to maintain relationships with policymakers and lay the groundwork for long-term changes while momentum in the short term has been halted.
“We can’t look at how bleak the landscape appears to be and throw our hands up and give up. Because political winds shift frequently in this country, and fairly dramatically, and when they shift again, we don’t want to start at zero,” says McGlinchey.
For the past three years the Government Relations team has organized “fly-ins”, which bring Woodwell Climate scientists to Washington D.C. for meetings with Members of Congress and their staff. The fly-ins are key to how the Center stewards relationships on Capitol Hill and raises issues like permafrost thaw or flood insurance risk to the attention of legislators. Despite this year’s political changes, Uttley was still able to bring 12 scientists, board members, and staff for meetings with 15 congressional offices this September.
Woodwell has also remained active in coalition groups, which combine the power of many organizations to push for common goals.
“We’re engaged in the Adaptation Working Group, Friends of NOAA, the Coalition for National Science Funding, and more,” says Uttley. “From a policy perspective we have really seen the advocacy community rally together this year.”
And while the U.S. regresses on climate action, the rest of the world continues forward. Woodwell Climate is helping to propel important climate policy on the international stage, forming a delegation to the annual UN Conference of Parties (COP) in Belém, Brazil in November. Given its location, tropical forests will feature heavily on the agenda this year, and the Center will be showcasing emerging work on tropical regenerative agriculture, sustainable development in the DRC, and financing for forest protection. The Center is also collaborating with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to provide technical support for countries submitting biennial transparency reports on their progress towards climate goals.
Momentum on climate means telling climate stories
Still, facing down the urgency and magnitude of climate change, these incremental wins and slowly unfolding plans often don’t feel like enough compared to swift federal actions. Especially for individuals who don’t have their hands on the levers of power. But Uttley says the local level is where most change has always started, and individuals can make a difference.
“While I’m working to make systemic change on the federal level, one of the most powerful things each of us can do to keep up momentum on climate is to tell stories about local impacts,” says Uttley. Whether it’s about soccer practices canceled for heat or commuting lanes flooded, stories that connect climate change to our daily lives help change minds and motivate action.
Working on climate policy in times like these is a careful balance of hope and disappointment, Uttley says, but in order to move forward hope always has to win out. Not wishful thinking, but the kind of hope that springs from facing down the obstacles and getting to work.
“I’ve been in public policy and advocacy for 15 years,” says Uttley. “If I didn’t have a strong sense of optimism and hope, I would not be able to do this job.”
The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding has underpinned almost all U.S. efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, making it a prime target for the Trump administration’s rollback of climate policies. A day-one executive order included a directive to review the “legality and continuing applicability” of the finding. On March 12, the EPA announced that it would potentially rescind the Finding, and the announcement was formalized with a proposed rule on July 29.
Repealing the Finding would undo more than a decade of work that has made American communities healthier, skies clearer of smog and other pollution, and contributed to the country’s decreasing carbon emissions.
What is the Endangerment Finding?
The Endangerment Finding is a pivotal determination by the EPA, issued in response to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court Case Massachusetts vs. EPA. In that case, the court held that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, and that after it has made a finding of endangerment, the agency cannot refuse to regulate these gases.
Additionally, the EPA found that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are both a hazard to public health and that motor vehicle emissions contribute to this pollution. In the years since, the EPA has built on the original ruling and issued subsequent endangerment findings relating to aircraft and utility emissions under other provisions of the Clean Air Act .
Why is the Endangerment Finding important?
As a result, the Endangerment Finding has become the legal foundation for essentially all federal regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. – including motor vehicle tailpipe emissions and power plant rules.
The EPA’s proposed rule would repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines, and would preempt any state fuel efficiency or vehicle emissions laws or regulations. Furthermore, this repeal could be a foundation for undoing greenhouse gas emissions regulations on stationary sources like power plants or oil and gas facilities.
The Endangerment Finding is based on sound science
The attempt to repeal the Endangerment Finding is emblematic of the current administration’s disregard for scientific consensus around the causes and impacts of climate change.
The original finding draws from expertise at the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the National Academies of Sciences. It examined public health and public welfare in the U.S., with a focus on air quality, food production and agriculture, forestry, water resources, sea level rise and coastal areas, energy, infrastructure, and settlements, and ecosystems and wildlife. The EPA received over 380,000 public comments, the majority of which provided support for the Finding.
In 2018, Dr. Philip Duffy, then-president of Woodwell Climate Research Center, led a review of the scientific foundation of the Endangerment Finding. That work, published in the journal Science, found that “for each of the areas addressed in the EF, the amount, diversity, and sophistication of the evidence has increased markedly, clearly strengthening the case for endangerment. New evidence about the extent, severity, and interconnectedness of impacts detected to date and projected for the future reinforces the case that climate change endangers the health and welfare of current and future generations.”
What’s next for climate policy?
The legal validity of the administration’s proposed rule was contested almost immediately and challenges will likely continue to roll in even if the rule is made official.
The EPA has extended a public comment period on this topic through September 22, 2025. The recently released Department of Energy (DOE) report, A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, which challenges scientific consensus by claiming that carbon dioxide-induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, serves as a foundation for the EPA’s proposed rule. That report is also open for public comment through September 2, 2025.
The National Academy of Sciences has fast-tracked its scientific review of the impacts of greenhouse gases on human health in order to inform the decision within the comment period, and has requested contributions from scientists and experts in the fields of public health, extreme weather, climate modeling, agriculture, and infrastructure. Woodwell Climate is contributing to the opportunities for public comment and scientific engagement to aid future consideration of this, and similar, proposals in courts and encourages members of the public to do the same.
