Federal government rolls back climate control legislation, favoring profit over protection
Humanity has long seemed fascinated by the prospect of humankind’s destruction at the hands of a hostile planet. In various religious texts, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bible to the Norse Poetic Edda, floods and other environmental catastrophes mark divine intervention in a corrupted world, or humanity’s rebirth after stark end times. Responding to industrialization, creative works of the 19th century began offering different visions of nature gone awry, in which humanity’s alienation from or hubristic assault on the environment fuels the extinction of mankind or all species. The diversity of the environmental apocalypse genre, featuring such books, films, and videogames as Parable of the Sower, Mad Max, and The Long Dark, indicates how deeply rooted the modern preoccupation with ecological collapse is.
Today, warnings of environmental—and societal—catastrophe are still a theme of popular fiction, but increasingly appear as well in scientific reports and the standard news cycle. The number of US natural disasters causing at least $1 billion of damage (CPI-adjusted to 2024) has increased every decade since 1980; whereas there were an average 3.3 billion-dollar natural disasters each year in the 1980s, there were 27 in 2024 alone, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). NASA reports that the rate of sea level rise in the past two decades was nearly twice that of the previous century, threatening cities from New Orleans to New York with flooding. As smoke from Canadian wildfires has descended across the US in recent summers, communities have seen the evidence that global wildfire seasons are now twice as destructive on average as two decades ago, as the World Resources Institute calculated.
Taken from the realm of fiction, the prospect of environmental disaster has become a significant source of worry for many. In a survey of 271 West students earlier this March, students reported their concerns about environmental degradation/climate change an average 3.1 on a 5-point scale, and 218 of those surveyed identified at least one way they believed environmental degradation or climate change is currently affecting their lives. The most common effect students reported was in prices and affordability, followed by air quality, extreme weather, and hotter temperatures.
While only 87 surveyed students described ways their environmental concerns are affecting their plans for the future, the scenarios imagined by many of these students—ranging from being unable to spend time outside to bringing children into a volatile world to having difficulty managing health conditions like asthma and allergies—reveal strong anxiety. Junior Lauren Adams is contemplating a wide range of concerns about the effects of environmental damage.
“Where am I going to live? How am I going to afford to live? Will I be allowed to move because many people will try to get away from the effects of climate change?” she asked in the survey. “The state of the environment around me? The future of all species? Everything in my future is affected by the world and its state.”
Amid such fears of environmental destruction, most students are looking to societal leaders to take action. In the March survey, 67.6% of students said they want more environmental regulation by the government, and only 9.3% wanted less. This reflects a national trend: polling by Pew Research Center finds that 60% of American adults say stricter environmental regulations are “worth the cost,” and 58% believe the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of global climate change.
Despite such public sentiment, the federal government has abandoned much of its environmental regulatory power in President Donald Trump’s second term. In February, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rescinded the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which serves as the basis for the agency’s regulation of climate-change-causing pollutants from cars, power plants, and other sources. In the finding, the EPA established that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to human health, thereby requiring it to regulate those pollutants by order of the Supreme Court.
Amy Barrilleaux, Communications Director for Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy group suing the EPA over the rescission, says that the agency’s decision lacks legal and scientific basis.
“The whole reason the EPA exists is to protect human health, and we know that human health is threatened by climate change, by greenhouse gases. And we know that the EPA, through a Supreme Court order, is obligated to protect people from that,” she said. “No matter how much it wants to say that it doesn't want to do that anymore, that is the mission of the agency.”
Rationalizing the rescission of the Endangerment Finding, the EPA has said that the deregulation will save $1.3 trillion by reducing emissions standards for motor vehicles and eliminating electric vehicle mandates. The agency also argued that there is no longer scientific basis for the Endangerment Finding since many of the climate change consequences anticipated in 2009 have not been realized. According to Barrilleaux, this flies in the face of the scientific consensus.
“We certainly have far more evidence, not less, that climate change and greenhouse gases are a threat to human health. In recent summers, we've had skies filled with toxic smoke from wildfires that have been made worse because of climate change,” she said. “Tick-borne illnesses have exploded in Wisconsin because we have milder winters now and tick-active seasons are longer. Reporting cases of Lyme disease in the state have quadrupled in the last 20 years. So we're talking droughts, flooding, severe storms; these are all public health threats because of climate change.”
Barrilleaux reflected that the Trump administration had signalled its intent to rescind the Endangerment Finding long before last month’s action, allowing Clean Wisconsin and the more than a dozen other environmental and health groups suing the EPA to file their suit within days of the rescission.
“We're at a time when anything can happen, but if there is a court system that makes a decision based on facts and precedent, then we’re extremely confident that we’ll win,” she said.
In the patchwork of state and municipal regulations that would emerge if the Endangerment Finding is not resurrected, Dr. Jim Feldman, professor of Environmental Studies and History at UW-Oshkosh, suggests that some corporations could abide by the strictest regions’ environmental policy to maintain access to consumer markets. However, he says this would have a limited effect.
“That logic wouldn't apply to something like power plants. If there are power plants that are acceptable in California, there’s no reason why, say, in Wisconsin you'd have to go to that standard if there weren't a strict standard put in place in Wisconsin as well,” he said. “So each state would have the ability to regulate, but having the federal government out of its regulatory role in greenhouse gas emissions is widely considered a step back for climate activism in the United States.”
Beyond greenhouse gas emissions, Barrilleaux notes a wide range of environmental and health threats that the federal government is loosening standards for.
“There were PFAS standards that were put in place by the EPA a few years ago. Now those are being walked back,” she said. “We have mercury and air toxin standards that are about to be unraveled here, probably in the next couple of weeks. I would expect us to file suit over that. We don't want more mercury in our air and in our fish, but that’s what we'll get if these standards are allowed to be rolled back.”
Other policy changes made under Trump’s leadership include: expanding natural resource cultivation on public lands; suing states over climate change policies deemed burdensome to fossil fuel interests; proposing to limit the Endangered Species Act; and promoting production of glyphosate-based herbicides, which have been deemed a cancer risk.
The EPA recently decided to stop considering the healthcare benefits of environmental protections, which will adapt the way that the agency determines whether to implement future regulations, according to Barrilleaux.
“When the EPA looks at a rule, they look at a couple different things, or they used to. How much will it cost for an industry to comply with the rule, and then how much does it cost if they don't do that?” she said. “So now they're only looking at the cost to industry to comply with a standard or regulation and not the savings by putting the regulation in place.”
Barrilleaux warns that this could pose a threat to public health and the environment.
“On the face of it, you can see how ludicrous that is,” she said. “For example, in Wisconsin, without the clean vehicle standards, we would have $552 million in annual health costs because more pollution causes 50 premature deaths, 520 cases of respiratory distress, 500 cases of asthma.”
Wider initiatives to shrink the size of the federal government, such as the cuts led by the Department of Government Efficiency in 2025, have also reduced federal environmental regulatory power, Dr. Feldman explains.
“The research capacity, the regulatory capacity, and the land management capacity have all been really negatively affected by just simply cutting funds and firing staff, cutting programs pulling back on grants intended to advance environmental goals,” he said.
Investigation by The New York Times found that, from November 2024 to November 2025, staffing fell 15% at the Forest Service, 14% at the National Park Service, 15% at the EPA, 20% at NOAA, and 33% at the Fish and Wildlife Service, although deep cuts were experienced across all departments.
Senior Carter Crowe supports rolling back governmental environmental regulations, positing that they are often arbitrary or create a guise of action when private sector solutions would be more effective.
“I think that regulations from the government make it extremely difficult for companies to perform at their best,” he said. “My dad manages Wisconsin's Alter Metal Recycling yards, and he says the environmental protection inspectors that come in are making work harder for managers because they must adhere to a rule book that some politician drafted.”
Although it seems intuitive that deregulation would support business development, Dr. Feldman observes that policy changes can make a more difficult environment for corporations to navigate.
“Businesses want regulatory clarity, meaning they just want to know what the rules are. And when the rules are constantly changing, it makes it difficult for them to make plans,” he said. “So there's plenty of evidence that suggests that even industries that you might think would be opposed, like the auto industries, are in favor of a stronger federal role, and certainly a clear regulatory role for the government on greenhouse gases.”
At the same time the administration has attempted to bolster the fossil fuel industries and clear the way for business production, it has obstructed renewable energy projects. Last October, the Department of Energy cancelled $7.5 billion of funding for clean energy projects, and, in January, the administration cut nearly $30 billion of loans approved by President Joe Biden to finance clean energy projects. Trump has also sought to dismantle much of the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that represented the nation’s largest investment in renewable energy in history.
Dr. Misty McPhee, associate professor of Environmental Studies and Biology at UW-Oshkosh, suggests that much of the resistance to the transition to renewable energy comes from comfort with existing systems and a lack of awareness of their detriments.
“We’re seeing a shift where some big farm fields are getting converted into solar fields, and you have people like, ‘You can’t do that, that’s the land!’” she said. “Well, monocrop corn wasn’t exactly great, but as a state we are so used to the landscape we see. We think corn everywhere is normal, and that’s something called a shifting baseline.”
Crowe believes that there should be more investment in America’s renewable energy industry, but does not see the technology as a current solution to environmental concerns.
“Renewable energy is a great concept, but we as humans have not mastered it yet,” he said. “I hope one day we can, but when you look at a windmill for example, most of a windmill is steel, and the process to create steel is super polluting.”
Other forms of clean energy have come under similar scrutiny for their harmful by-products, such as expired solar panels and the toxic waste produced by nuclear power plants. Although resolving such issues is a priority of many researchers, federal funding cuts for scientific research are also impeding the work to improve technologies. In the 2026 federal budget, Congress approved 31% and 27% cuts for the Department of Energy’s solar and wind energy research funding, respectively, at the same time it approved a $200 million increase in the DOE’s advanced coal research funding.
Dr. Feldman says that there are many possible interest groups that president Trump may be trying to appeal to with recent deregulatory actions and downsizing of the government.
“Many business interests certainly benefit in certain sectors, so fossil fuel companies and oil producers certainly benefit from that,” he said. “Climate change is political. The president has often called climate change a hoax, although not that many Americans still believe that climate change is a hoax.”
Though he says it’s too soon to tell how lasting the effects of the Trump administration’s cuts will be, Dr. Feldman points to past instances of federal attack on environmental policy, such as during the Reagan presidency, that may offer reassurance to those concerned about the current administration’s actions.
“Most people would say that Reagan overestimated the popularity of his anti-environmental agenda, and many of the things he tried to accomplish failed,” he said. “Actually, the environmental movement became even stronger during the 1980s in some ways because they rallied around protecting the regulatory infrastructure and land management infrastructure from attacks from the Reagan administration and his appointees.”
by Aria Boehler
Published March 20, 2026
Oshkosh West Index Volume 122 Issue VI