Arguments
The Trump administration on Thursday revoked the basis for federal climate regulations, undermining the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to protect the environment and public health.
Here’s what every U.S. resident should know about what just happened.
The EPA determined in 2009 that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare.
Mainstream, peer-reviewed scientific research shows that climate-warming greenhouse gases are increasing the number of extreme heat waves, severe storms, and other dangerous weather events.
Under former President Barack Obama, the EPA reviewed the evidence, and the agency’s “scientific conclusion, known as the endangerment finding, determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare,” The New York Times reports. “It required the federal government to regulate these gases, which result from the burning of oil, gas and coal.”
Among scientists, that perspective has not changed. Just the opposite: “The scientific understanding of human-driven climate change is much stronger today than it was in 2009 when the EPA first issued the endangerment finding,” climate scientist Zeke Hausfather wrote on Bluesky. “There is no scientific basis for the Trump administration’s decision to repeal it.”
The Trump administration is revoking standards for the two biggest sources of U.S. climate pollution.
Together, transportation and electric power plants generate over half the country’s climate-warming emissions.
Administration officials told the Wall Street Journal this week that they would revoke climate emissions standards for motor vehicles. Separately, the administration is working to gut or repeal standards for power plants, Mother Jones reports.
Repealing climate standards will hurt our health and our wallets.
Burning fossil fuels isn’t just heating up the climate. It’s generating other air pollution that makes us sick. In fact, air pollution causes about 100,000 premature deaths a year, “more deaths than traffic accidents and homicides combined,” as Yale Climate Connections contributor Karin Kirk has explained.
The administration is misleadingly claiming that climate regulations increase the cost of cars and trucks. In fact, as Dana Nuccitelli reported last fall, “This argument neglects the cost savings from reduced vehicle fueling bills and lessened climate damage. The Biden EPA estimated that its 2023 vehicle tailpipe rules would have generated about $1 trillion in net benefits over the next three decades.”
Regulating climate pollution is wildly popular with the U.S. public.
The White House’s actions are at odds with what the public actually wants. Americans overwhelmingly support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the publisher of this site. In fact, as you can see in this map, a majority in every U.S. county supports regulations on carbon dioxide.
Environmental groups will sue, but this Supreme Court might side with the White House.
The EPA moved with extraordinary haste to repeal the endangerment finding once Trump took office, The New York Times reports: “Legal experts said the speed would be no accident: It could allow the Supreme Court to consider related legal challenges while Mr. Trump is still in office. There, the conservative majority with an anti-regulatory bent could chip away at the federal government’s power to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that are dangerously warming the Earth.”
The Times added, “And in an extreme scenario, the court could sharply curtail a future Democratic administration’s efforts to fight global warming.
“They’re swinging for the fences,” Jody Freeman, the director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental and Energy Law Program, told the Times. “They want to not just do what other Republican administrations have done, which is weaken regulations. They want to take the federal government out of the business of regulation, period.”
All this could backfire on oil companies.
Julia Kane and Josh Voorhees report at Heated that the administration’s actions seem to be making fossil fuel companies nervous about the dozens of lawsuits they’re facing over climate change.
“A critical part of their legal defense has been that, because the federal government already regulates greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, any claims under state law are preempted. Therefore, they say state and local lawsuits should be thrown out of court, and state laws should be struck down,” Kane and Voorhees write.
“That defense is now being threatened by the Trump EPA’s actions. If the administration’s final rule says the Clean Air Act doesn’t give EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases, then it will be considerably more difficult for Big Oil to contend state efforts are federally preempted.”
The revocation of much of the regulatory systems in the USA seems to be akin to banning common sense. Of course we all know who is supposed to benefit from all this, and it is NOT Joe Public.
Recommended supplementary reading:
Q&A: What does Trump’s repeal of US ‘endangerment finding’ mean for climate action? by Multiple Auhors, Carbon Brief, Feb 16, 2026
This article or another article should discuss the legal basis for the endangerment finding or its rescission. Regardless of opinions of scientific merit it is worth going over the history.
The current administration's EPA states "The agency concludes that Section 202(a) of the CAA does not provide EPA statutory authority to prescribe motor vehicle emission standards for the purpose of addressing global climate change concerns". Is that correct?
In 2009 the EPA based their endangerment finding on this 2007 Supreme Court case: Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007) that ruled 5-4 on the merits of GHG regulation, that in fact GHG were an "air pollutant" causing actual harm to the litigants, including the state of Massachusetts. The ruling also maintained that GHG fell into Congress's definition of "air pollutant" due to the wording "including" in the statute. But the CAA or amendments through 1990 did not "include" GHG. The IRA passed in 2022 amended the CAA to give EPA authority to regulate GHG under the CAA. The BBB in 2025 reduced that authority through funding cuts and and a rescission of the GGRF authority. Also in 2025 Congress rescinded the authority of EPA to grant waivers to California. That is being litigated. Congress probably did not have Congressional Review Act authority over waivers.
The recent rescission of the endangerment finding will also be litigated and the inclusion of EPA regulatory authority over GHG by the 2022 IRA will be weighed against some reduction in that authority by the "Big Beautiful Bill" in 2025.
It's fair to say that looking at both of those purely partisan bills, that Congress needs to write GHG laws that are unambiguous to avoid the major problem the 2007 decision, namely USSC justices opining on science. Science is not in their jurisdiction as the 5-4 decision shows. Congress also has to include laws on limits to GHG authority for states to preempt federal law in either direction. Science can inform Congressional action and all the details can be left to the regulators, but obviously the outlines of the scientific mandate and specific scope of regulation must be part of the law.
Otherwise we end up with what we just saw which is the executive branch bouncing between extremes on regulatory questions. Legally the executive branch controls the EPA and has the authority to make those regulatory decisions, unless the regulations are clearly specified in law.
Eric:
The key point in your comment is the statement "this will be litigated". That, of course, will take time.
The current political/legal/constitutional situation in the U.S. (I consider all three of those words to be equivalent today) is that the executive/legislative/judicial branches are pretty much in a mode where they think they can do anything they want - or at least, anything they think they can get away with.
Legal precedent means very little in a Supreme Court that looks at precedence as a minor inconvenience that can be ignored at will. Far too many lower court decisions are being decided along party lines (who appointed the judge). The executive branch has an attitude that it doesn't matter what the courts say as long as they can break things they want to break before the long legal process plays out. And the legislative branch is refusing to take back the powers that the constitution gives them - content to let the executive branch act like a bull in a china shop.
Recommeded supplemental reading:
Trump Administration Dropped Controversial Climate Report From Its Decision to Rescind EPA Endangerment Finding
The final EPA rule explicitly omitted the report commissioned last year to justify revoking the endangerment finding, citing “concerns raised by some commenters.”
by Dennis Pillion, Inside Climate News, Feb 13, 2026
Bob, I agree with you but have more sympathy for the USSC which was asked to decide a scientific / regulatory question with a 5-4 vote in 2007 but would vote 6-3 the other way today. That's not their fault, it's Congress shirking its responsibility to act. The can do it, and have with Diesel Emissions Reduction Act which also lowers CO2 and is bipartisan and continues to be reauthorized. Also the HFC act in 2020. DERA is incentive based, like the bipartisan infrastructure act which some republicans, especially in the Senate, signed onto. Spending more money on whatever is an easy way to buy those votes.
The 2007 case at the USSC is not very general or valuable as precedent. As the Roberts dissent points out it is "special solicitude". Massachusetts cannot enumerate how the loss of vehicle standards will affect their loss of coastal property. Nor can they link how the proposed vehicle standards will save their coastal property, because there are too many other factors not under our control. He states 'The good news is that the Court’s “special solicitude” for Massachusetts limits the future applicability of the diluted standing requirements applied in this case'.
Bottom line Congress needs to create specific numeric targets like CAA did with carbon monoxide. Let industries and/or states decide how to meet them. Or just spend a lot more borrowed money (I do not endorse that approach).
Eric:
Your bottom line of expecting Congress to act looks like a dead horse to me. Two years ago, the USSC reversed the Chevron deference precedent (as discussed on this SkS repost in July, 2004). This has the effect of barring the executive branch from being pro-active. The expectation that Congress will react to each and every new pollutant and set new limits on old ones when science says it is needed is beyond their skill set.
Enacting legislation that empowers the executive branch to regulate allows for efficiencies in dealing with unexpected issues and new problems. Of course, that regulatory power needs to be clearly limited in the legislation that grants it, but expecting Congress to revisit the legislation every time something changes a bit (e.g. new science, new risks, new pollution limits) is a dog that won't hunt.
...but I think that is part of the plan. Sell the "we can't let unelected administrators make decisions, we need to leave that to Congress" story, knowing that Congress won't (or can't) get their act together. End result: no regulation at all, and industry is free to pollute in any way that makes money for them. That approach made lots of money for the robber barons of the 19th century. I'd hoped we were past that.
John @ 5:
They may have dropped that horribly-biased document from their formal evaluation report, but it's effect lingers on.
It's like a Law and Order episode, where the lawyer makes an outrageous statement or leading question, knowing that there will be an objection and the judge will rule it out of order - but the jury can't unhear it.
Why not leave it to congress to decide whether the most important pollution regulations should become law, and obviously that would include CO2, and leave it to the EPA to have authority to decide on whether the smaller pollution ssues become law. Surely criteria can be agreed on what issues fit in what category. That way congress dont get overwhelmed with dealing with minor issues that are quite technical
nigel:
I don't know the internal workings of legislation in the US, but in Canada the process of legislating federal regulations goes something like this:
As a crude, simplistic example, when a province delegates authority to the Ministry of Highways to set speed limits on the provincial roads, the decisions on what those limits are will be done by administrators within the ministry, under the advice of people that understand traffic. (Well, sometimes it might also be under political pressure. If the politicians want to force such limits, they need to pass legislation to do it. Let's not go there.)
The idea that there are large sections of government that are creating regulations willy-nilly, completely independent of Parliament (AKA "elected representatives"), is bollocks.
IMHO, the push to disallow regulation management by the administrative branch and force it back on legislatures is driven by special interests that simply want to eliminate regulation. By refusing to delegate any authority down to levels where they can be managed by subject experts (i.e., lower than the legislature), they can assure that their political goals can be reached simply by buying managing the politicians.
Thanks Bob. You create a persuasive case for ultimately leaving regulations to the technocrats within government agencies and to the executive branch. Regulatory capture of politicians in congress and parliament is very real.
Recommended supplemental reading:
Trump’s Move to Demolish Demolish Greenhouse Gas Standards Is Based on a Lie by Richard L. Revesz*, Slate, Feb 20, 2026
*Richard L. Revesz is a professor and dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law. He is the co-author of Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal.”
nigel:
"...leaving regulations to the technocrats within government agencies..." is not that easy. As usual, the devil is in the details.
In your and my systems, handed down from our previous existence as British colonies, there is a blurring of lines between "executive" and "legislative" branches of government. Our Prime Ministers are not elected directly - they gain office through having the support (confidence) of Parliament. They are expected to have won seats in Parliament as MPs representing an individual riding. And their cabinet members are selected from the group of elected MPs, too. The PM and cabinet then become the ministers at the top of the executive branch. Thus, the executive branch is under the guidance of elected members of the governing party in Parliament. (In Canada, unelected senators also sometimes get appointed to cabinet, but it is rare. And you can be PM or in cabinet without a position in the house or senate, but it is expected that you attempt to win a seat ASAP.) Virtually all bills of substance are introduced by the governing party.
That is in stark contrast to the US system, where the election of the head of the executive branch (the President) is independent of the elections of people to the House or Senate. And the president can pick his cabinet from anywhere (although appointments do need house and/or senate approval.) Bills can be presented by the president, by congress, or by senators.
In either system, it is common for the executive branch to guide the development of legislation, but this connection is much stronger in a parliamentary system than it is in the US. The most beneficial arrangement is when the executive branch has access to people with expertise in the relevant areas - in particular, access to professional civil servants that set aside political motivations when doing their jobs.
In Canada, I am familiar with cases where the governing party had motivations to go in one direction, but professional civil servants were able to convince them of real problems if they carried through with their plans. And the politicians (cabinet members) listened to those professionals. This is not always the case, though. Some civil servants are more motivated to keep the minister happy, regardless of consequences. Problems develop when civil servants no longer perform a challenge function - when told to jump, they just ask "how high?". They are unwilling to stick their neck out and say "that's not a good idea".
The current US administration has largely lost any challenge function at all. Senior administrative staff (maybe all staff) are expected to act in the political interests of their masters. We see this in who is placed in cabinet, the threats and firings of lower level staff, etc. The EPA decision in this OP is a prime example (as is the "report" that was prepared by the gang of five that questioned climate science in general). The executive branch is expected to ignore anything that goes against the White House political goals, and provide justification no matter how weak.
The current US administration largely rejects any sort of expertise that goes against their goals. They don't want to listen to it, and they want to actively prevent anyone else from listening to it, too. As far as developing legislation is concerned, you get laws put in place that were developed by outside political interests such as the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Administrative regulatory bodies can also be affected by regulatory capture. You need these things to be set up to get broad input from concerned parties, with an overall attitude that balanced interests, proper evidence, and science-based policies are all "good things". (Instead of policy-based "science".)
Actually thinking about this some more the issue is really a choice between rule by politicians and rule by technocrats, and which is preferable. Amplifying this do we prefer 1) decision making by politicians or 2) leaving decisions up to unelected technocratic groups within government. We do the former with many things, for example politicians vote on spending bills and changes to criminal laws and on social policies etc,etc. We do the later with Reserve Banks where they are given total discretion to decide the official cash rate independent of politicians, because politicians literally cannot be trusted to make good decisions in that area. I'm not arguing against this with the cash rate, its virtually commonsense, but from a philosophical perspective I would argue democracy is ideally best, so politicians should decide on everything. because its the most democratic approach. Even better perhaps is public referenda.
If there's regulatory capture of politicians lets minimise that by minimising the influence of money in politics. So on that basis ideally the endangerment finding should have been voted on by politicians. But coming back to my own comments it would be onerous for politicians to have to evaluate and vote on every little regulation so some of this has to be left to the discretion of technocrats as a practical sort of thing. Bobs right that they can be subject to regulatory capture as well but then you can minimise that.
I'm not entirely comfortable with rule by technocrats, but I accept its needed in some cases.
nigelj,
A better question is Should decisions with the potential for harm to be done to Others be made by:
Type 1) People who diligently and rigorously pursue learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others, and who will change their mind as they learn more.
Type 2) People who want the freedom to Believe and Do as they Please.
I would argue that Type 2 people need to be kept from influencing decision-making that potentially affects Others. They need responsible governing by Type 1 people to limit the harm done to Others.
nigel:
I want to see decisions made by people with expertise in the subject area, who have sufficient background to understand a wide variety of issues related to the decision, and who have a track record of seeing some reasonable number of their predictions come to pass. And who have a track record of making decisions that are in the interest of a wide variety of people other than themselves and their close friends/business partners.
...but the trick is figuring out who those people are. In the case of a professional public service, one hopes that the hiring and promotion process is reasonably accurate in determining who has real expertise, and who has the best skills for collecting evidence, analyzing it, and interpreting it. And one hopes that management has enough knowledge and skill to be able to figure out who is worth listening to.
One of my favorite Dr. Who quotes is one where he has flown the Tardis into the president's office, with security all over the room ready to shoot him and his friends. One lowly fellow says:
Ultimately, the professional public service is still working for the politicians. Unlike academic research, the scientists I knew understood that the reason they were hired to do research was because government needed the knowledge they could bring to the table. All the "technocrat" work is guided by politicians through legislation and policy. It is not independent rule.
Ultimately, the politicians need to know who they can get good advice from, and when to listen to it. If the politicians are not interested in good advice - only confirmation - then the people that elect them need to do a better job of choosing their politicians.
Except that a lot of current politics does not involve trying to make sure that voters are well-informed on issues and can make good decisions. It is based on the ability to manipulate voters emotions, and stop them from learning and thinking about the issues. Holding referenda to decide things opens the door to huge amounts of emotive manipulation - both by politicians and other third parties.
Here in Canada, some people want to see elected judges, under the argument that they don't want policy done by unelected people. Judges don't make policy, they interpret laws. Laws that were passed by elected politicians. Politicians are supposed to control the judicial system through legislation (and constitutional amendment, if needed), and the same goes for the executive branch that performs regulation. I want judges with legal training. I want regulation done by people with suitable scientific background. (I'll include the social sciences here.)
I agree that current politics are badly influenced by money - especially in the US, where it seems to be a case of "one dollar, one vote". Too many of the people in power seem to be only interested in more power. Voters are just there to be manipulated and provide the illusion of democracy.
...and no, I don't have a fix.
Bob Loblow @16, I must have missed that Dr Who episode ha ha.
I'm sure we ideally want decisions made by people with expertise in the subject area. We clearly need a whole lot of technocrats to decipher the issues and come up with recommended solutions. But that wasnt my point. Someone has to have the final say on whether a proposed regulation becomes law, so should it be the technocrats (which seemed to be the situation with the endangerment finding) or the politicians by way of voting on the regulation? You seem to be skirting around that. Or maybe I wasnt clear.
I'm not inclined to push for elected judges. I'm happy with Judges appointed by politicians for long periods, providing we somehow minimise partisan bias in those selections. Not all processes in society have to involve democratic decision making and votes or elections. Judges work is not policy as you rightly say.
But I think that we have a democracy where we elect politicians to come up with policies and decide on them, and to then defer major decisions on what becomes law to unelected government department technocrats seems undemocratic and at odds with electing politicians to make decisions, and so should be minimised. Even if it sometimes means politicians have to decipher complex technical arguments. Judges also have to do that. There doesn't seem to be an ideal solution.
---------------------------
OPOF @15, I'm inclined to agree with your rationale, but its up to the public to decide who they give power to. Unfortunately they then go and elect someone like Trump.
nigel: you say "... then defer major decisions on what becomes law..."
...but as I explained earlier at least in the Canadian sense, is that the technocrats (I don't really like that term, but "executive branch" or "administrative branch" doesn't really cover it, either) don't make law writ large. They just apply the law to create rules and regulations in a manner clearly delegated by the elected legislative branch.
It's not a case of "well, we're not going to deal with that; let's let the bureaucracy deal with it". It's more a case of "we've thought about it, and we've established the way we want it dealt with, but we will leave the details to the technocrats". The legislature is still responsible for what happens (you can't delegate responsibility), but the subordinate administration is given the authority (which you can delegate) to act.
In the case of the endangerment finding, the earlier legislation (Clean Air Act) determined that the EPA was responsible for regulating air pollution that had detrimental effects on people or the environment. AFAIK, the original legislation did not list every chemical that was considered a pollutant - it left that as a determination for the EPA. Then came the question of whether CO2 needed to be included on that list, and after several levels of court cases, the USSC said "yes, the science says CO2 is an air pollutant, and the EPA must take steps to review it and regulate it if necessary". The recent EPA position is that it is not a pollutant that is causing any harm. (I'm sure that lawyers will make more money out of this.)
So, it is not a case that the EPA decided that regulating air pollutants was something it needed to do - that decision was made in the legislative branch when the Clean Air Act was passed. The legislative branch delegated the authority to the EPA to determine what (or what not) is an air pollutant (with a little help from the courts).
What I am sure will be the legal process moving forward is questions as to whether the current EPA decision actually followed all the legal obligations set out in various legislation. The EPA was not told via the Clean Air Act to "do whatever you want". The EPA was told "you can make some decisions, but this is the process you need to go through to make your decisions".
In the case of last year's Climate Working Group (the gang of five that produced the hugely biased report), there were legal challenges in the works that took the EPA to task for ignoring the various aspects of the process that the various laws required. The EPA decided to withdraw the report and pretend it never happened - undoubtedly to try to avoid having their new decision challenged in court as a violation of process.
You can argue whether the Clean Air Act and other legislation gave too much discretion (or not enough) to the EPA, but the EPA is expected to act according to the directions it was given by legislation. The cabinet member at the top of the executive branch (Minister in Canada, or the Secretary in the US) can guide how the bureaucracy works, but he or she does need to work within the framework specified in legislation.
If you needed to get new legislation passed to decide if every new pollutant was indeed a pollutant, you'd never get anything done. (That's the current goal in the US, I think.) That's where delegating the decision to some form of expert review process provides flexibility.
Bob Loblow: "You can argue whether the Clean Air Act and other legislation gave too much discretion (or not enough) to the EPA, but the EPA is expected to act according to the directions it was given by legislation..."
Yes thats precisely what I'm doing. I'm arguing the clean air act gives too much discretion to the EPA. For me the decisions on whether a chemical is an air pollutant and should thus be regulated should rest with elected politicians. At least in respect of substances where the implications would be huge like CO2. I accept you cant have politicians decide on every single chemical substance, as you say things would grind to a halt.
As I already said we elect politicians to make the major decisions, and surely what we do about CO2 is a major decision. The details of how regulations might be structured can of course be left to something like the EPA. Of course its really just my opinion so I wont labour the point further.
And this looks like its part of the rationale that has overtuned the endangerment finding, along with some sort of argument about the costs of the endangerment finding and regulating CO2 allegedly exceeding the benefits (Im not sure the EPA have proven that by a long way.)
Now I hope this overturning of the endangerment finding is challenged in court. The endangerment finding was the law, and even although I dont believe its the ideal sort of law to fight climate change, and was always at risk of coming unstuck, it was the law and it seemed to have reasonably wide public support. And it was helping promote EV's. On that basis its ok law in a democratic sense. And its better than nothing. Hope that doesn't sound contradictory.
The scientific community and lawyers did well undermining the CWG / DOE junk science report, on both the science and the lack of proper transparency of process. That had to be done for all sorts of reasons.
Nigel:
Your second paragraph kind of contradicts itself. You say that the decisions on whether a chemical is an air pollutant should rest with the politicians, but you say you can't have politicians decide on every single chemical substance. [By "politicians", I am assuming that you mean "elected representatives".]
You qualify that in your third paragraph by saying that the politicians should make the major decisions - but how do you decide what are the major decisions, and what decisions are not?
The way that our democracies work (or not) is that the politicians (in the legislative branch) voice their decisions by enacting laws. Just as there are laws that control the actions of the general public, there are laws that control the actions of government. The legislators (politicians) are not allowed to contact the administration and tell them what to do. (Speaking from personal experience, if a Canadian politician wants to visit a federal government research site, he has to ask the Minister to arrange it.)
On the executive side (the administration), absolutely everything that is done must be something that they are either commanded to do or allowed to do according to law. If a civil servant decides to do something (spend money, start a research program, set up an office), there has to be a clear track back to some sort of legislation that grants that authority to that civil servant (or to someone who can in turn delegate that authority to that individual). That civil servant is not allowed to decide completely on their own that they can spend government resources on something that the legislature has never, ever considered.
To belabour the point further, let's go back to that "is this a pollutant or not?" question. Let's assume that no current legislation specifically identifies chemical X as a pollutant. This means that the politicians have not made any decision on it. Someone realizes that X has health implications. The government then says "hmmm. Maybe we should study that". Can they? Not if there is no legislation that gives them that authority. Should they need to wait for politicians to pass a law saying they can study it? A guaranteed way of making sure that nothing ever gets done.
So, the law really needs to allow the executive branch to have some flexibility to look into "unknowns". The structure in government is that the more important the decision, the higher up the food chain it needs to go when decisions are made. The most obvious example is budgets. When in government, I had the authority to buy toilet paper when the buildings I looked after were running low. I did not have the authority to buy a new building when office space was running low. I had decision-making authority over local toilet paper purchases. I did not need to ask the politicians.
In Canada, ministers at the top of the executive branch food chain are also politicians, but they still keep those two hats separate. They can present laws to the legislature and get them passed, but as an executive, they are only allowed to command the ministry (executive branch) to do what the law allows. Their status as politicians does not change this. Any decisions they make may (will?) be done for political purposes, but a law still has to exist that gives them the authority to make that decision as a Minister.
In the US, the secretary in charge of a department is usually not an elected politician. Any decisions they make are not being made by elected representatives (no matter how "political" that decision may be). Again, they should only make decisions on matters that legislation grants them the authority to make.
To beat the drum of decision-making, the legislation that empowers anyone in this chain must clearly state what authorities are being delegated to what level, under what circumstances, and what sort of process must be followed in researching and making decisions (or recommendations). Saying that "the politicians [elected representatives] need to make this decision" basically means "this decision requires an Act of the legislative branch".
Semi-on-topic (which translates to semi-off-topic...)
I just read an article at CNN that discusses the recent USSC decision on Trump's tariffs. A major question (and source of disagreement between the majority and minority positions of the nine justices) has to do with something called the "major questions doctrine". This has to do with questions of whether vague laws can be interpreted to grant wide discretion and authority to the executive branch (in this case, the President), or whether the executive branch can only take on authority that is clearly granted. (Read the article - it does a better job of explaining it.)
The reason I'm posting this here is because I think it is central to nigel's and my views on delegation of decision-making authority in the context of pollution controls. Two-thirds of the USSC seem to think that even the President is expected to only use authority granted to him by either the constitution or by the legislative branch (where the constitution has given them the authority in question).
Food for thought when reading my previous comment about legislative vs executive branch decision-making.
nigel:
Re-reading your comment 19, I see that are clearly using the phrase "elected politicians". It's not something I needed to assume, as I wrote in comment 20.
Bob Loblow @20
BL: "You qualify that in your third paragraph by saying that the politicians should make the major decisions - but how do you decide what are the major decisions, and what decisions are not?........So, the law really needs to allow the executive branch to have some flexibility to look into "unknowns"."
I'm suggesting that if a regulatory proposal is found to have a huge potential impact on society like regulating CO2, the final determination of whether its a pollutant and needs regulations, and the final approval of such regulations should rest with the legislative branch by way of vote. Maybe the EPA should be required to apply a test, and it can do so at any stage the regulatory issue in the chain of assessment. Perhaps its possible to look at the likely impact of the regulation on the economy and say if its above level xyz it needs to go to the legislature. You could look at imapct on gdp or wages or whatever. It doesnt have to be something perfect , just enough to ensure the legislature gets the big issues to vote on, and not too many small issues to deal with.
Perhaps look at the history of regulations going back a few decades and on the economic impacts and identify the costs of the 10% or 5% of regulations with the greatest economic impacts and then this cost becomes the threshold where any new regulations have to go to the legislature for final approval. That means the legislature aren't overburdened with too many to consider.
Even if things are left to the executive branch to figure out whether something is a pollutant, and they have the flexibility to look into unknowns, they can still be required to do the test I suggested, at some point in time when its appropriate.
Sorry about my use of the term elected politicians. It was confusing.
nigel:
First, I didn't find the term "elected politicians" confusing. It's just that I'd forgotten you had added "elected" within the meat of the text, and I was in the mind set where a lot of "politicians" are outside the small set that are actually holding elected office.
The problem I see with your "let the legislature vote" aspect is that it seems completely impractical to me. The legislature can only vote on matters that the constitution allows. (Well, they can vote on other things, but then the judicial system is supposed to void that vote when someone challenges it in court.) Once the legislature votes, that vote becomes law. Saying "let the legislature vote" is basically saying "to do this, we need a new law".
The problem is that it seems highly unlikely that you can design any effective process where it becomes easy to identify that a particular pollutant (in this case) is one that is important enough to require that legislative approval. Any simple metric will fail, in my mind. How does environmental damage show up in GDP? And then you need to codify that into law ("legislature votes").
The Canadian legislation that I am familiar with requires that costs, impact on different sectors of the economy, etc. are all considered when proposing regulations. There are always trade-offs. The example that I am most familiar with is the banning of ozone-depleting CFCs. When the bans were implemented, exceptions were made for industries where there were no alternatives (or excessively-expensive ones).
The "let the legislature vote" risks excessive micro-management. I have seen the effects on government efficiency when politicians decided that "responsible management" meant requiring authorization at higher and higher levels. Middle management becomes a relay service shuffling requests upstream and answers (if you get one) downstream. Decisions end up getting made by people at the top who are not at all familiar with the issues. (Yes, I would put many politicians into that class. They are limited in number, and even their collective knowledge cannot make them experts on everything.)
A huge question is the issue of trust. If you can't trust the administrative branch to make a good decision, can you trust them to make a good recommendation? Can you trust them to do a thorough job in examining the issue and providing the politicians with a balanced summary? If you don't trust them, then what other sources of information can be used to enable the politicians to make an informed decision?
[I suspect we agree that in the current US administration, the president doesn't trust anyone that questions him. And he doesn't trust science. And he doesn't trust anyone that he thinks "works for the Democrats", or "the deep state". We see in the recent EPA analysis just who they trust when it comes to climate science.]
As for tracking the costs of regulations: that to me suggests the creation of a huge Rube Goldberg-like bureaucracy. Again, my government experience has exposed me to too may instances where the system is willing to spend thousands of dollars of people's time to make sure that $100 was properly spent. I lived in a world of this XKCD comic:
Bob, I do acknowledge it would be difficult apportioning which pollutant decisions require legislative approval and which could be completely left to the EPA to do its thing. So you get the last say with your previous comment. I'm out of energy for any more anyway.
Trumps deep distrust of science might be psychological projection. Hes so incredibly dishonest himself he assumes everyone else is.
The effects of his presidency on American science look quite crippling. Last months Economist Journal has a good article on the issue. I dont have a link because I buy the paper version for the coffee table.
I wish to add to my comment @15. It relates to the interesting discussion between nigelj and Bob Loblaw. It is in response to nigelj @17 comment that “… its up to the public to decide who they give power to.”
Like Bob Loblaw states @16, “I don’t have a fix.” But, as an Engineer, I appreciate that figuring out how to solve a challenge starts with developing a robust understanding of the challenge. Without a thorough robust understanding of a ‘problem needing to be fixed’ it is likely that what is believed to be a fix is likely to fail. That can be understood to mean that pursuits of personal interest that are not governed by the pursuit of learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others are likely to result in dangerous harmful misunderstandings being popular.
It is important to understand that issues where there is potential harm to Others cannot be allowed to be ‘decided by power obtained through a popularity contest’, even if the matter is a major public interest issue. It can be argued that the more potential for harm to Others the more important it is that the decisions not be ‘governed by popular opinion’. A related point would be that when there is the potential for ‘harm to Others beyond a reasonable doubt’ the legal system should block the potentially harmful actions until a more rigorous understanding is developed regarding the harm. And it is equally important to understand that ‘it is not harmful to curtail or limit the obtaining of economic benefit from harmful and potentially harmful actions’.
A clear example of this is the adequacy of structure designs. The adequacy of the designs should not be determined by popularly elected representatives. Elected representatives do need to ‘legislate building codes and material design codes’ to ensure a legal motivation for ‘safe design’. But, in addition to being the originators of the detailed content of those legislated rules of law, responsible engineers should ‘self-govern that way’, including constantly improving the detailed understanding and presentation of the codes and standards. Also, if the structural engineering community becomes aware that some existing structures are more dangerous than they should be (because of a harmful misunderstanding or lack of awareness during design and construction or deterioration of condition over time) then those structures should have their use limited, including termination of use, until the problem is effectively understood and corrected.
Specialists in the design of safe structures and experts in each of the many potential types of materials (Steel, Concrete, Wood, Aluminum, ...) need to be relied upon to develop adequate design codes and standards without influence from elected representatives (popularity driven) or industry representatives (profit driven). It would be harmful to allow proponents of one type of building system or material to influence the requirements for competing alternative systems and materials. As an example, Steel proponents should not influence the requirements for Concrete design, and vice versa. And both the steel and Concrete design requirements should produce comparably safe results.
Competition for benefit can tempt people away from being helpful Type 1) people. It encourages people to be more harmful Type 2) people. Obviously, it can be very damaging when competitors for benefit, status, profit and popularity are allowed to influence what is allowed to be gotten away with.
Elected representatives need to be excluded from having influence on the details, including in high level significant legal requirements like Building Codes and questions of pollution. The role of the elected representatives should be restricted to ensuring that a robust rigorous effort isolated from political, popularity or profit motive influence is performed by experts who have a proven history of dedication to learning what is harmful in order to limit harm done and be more helpful to Others – experts who will produce sustainable and constantly improving developments for the future of humanity.
As I said at the beginning of this comment. ‘I do not have a fix’. But I think the problem is the reluctance of people to understand the ‘inevitable significant harm that will be produced by poorly governed competition for popularity, profit and status’. Democracy and capitalism can easily devolve into authoritarian tyrannical plutocracy.
OPOF @26:
You often talk in terms of "harm to others" and personality types that do (or do not) see that as something that should not be allowed. I'm sure that some react to your writings as "he wants to control things that others do" - sort of a "he wants the world structured his way" kind of dominance.
...but in this post, as I read it, I see your position as one where nobody has the right to force harm on others. As such, I see it as a call to Freedom - each person needs to be free from others causing them harm.
Although you talk of not wanting power by "popularity contest" or "popular opinion", I do not see your post as being a call against democracy. I see it as a recognition that even those in the minority have rights. We cannot allow "the tyranny of the majority".
Many countries have some sort of charter of rights built into their laws or constitution - often based on the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 1 states:
This encompasses your frequent call to not cause "harm to others". By saying "all human beings", the UN declaration is meant to apply to each individual human being, even if a minority of one. I can't infringe on their rights. My gang can't infringe on their rights. My government can't infringe on their rights. My elected representatives can't infringe on their rights.
I like your example of structural design and building codes. I am not an engineer, but I have worked with many. For a while I also worked along side people that were responsible for updating and maintaining weather-related data for building designs - things like roof snow loads, precipitation records for building and road design, etc.
These are rules that must be followed ("regulations", in a way), and carry with them a significant cost factor. But the codes did not need approval of politicians. The people I knew sat in on the committees that developed the codes. Industry participated, but did not have final say. Code did not tell industry "this is how you have to build a roof", but it did say "you need to make it this strong". Industry is then free to be creative in how they design a roof - but within the limits of code.
I agree with how you describe the role of elected representatives: assuring that there is a robust, rigorous decision-making process where all affected voices may be heard (usually called "stakeholders"), but there is a priority on finding a balanced solution that respects the needs of all. You'll never please everyone, but if the displeasure is limited to a few highly selfish individuals or groups. then I think it can be discounted. The argument "that will cost too much; I don't care who dies if it collapses after the final cheque clears" should not be tolerated. There is no fundamental right to even greater profit that overshadows someone else's right to life.
Nigel has indicated that he wants to conclude our back-and-forth, so I won't beat that horse any more. (Even that horse has rights...) I will point out that the same issues OPOF raises in terms of building codes, etc. apply to pollution levels, etc. Much of the devil is in the details. As OPOF points out, unless you have a very clear understanding of the problem, the "fix" you put into place is destined to failure. An essential part of the "fix" is to make sure that the process of developing regulations is well controlled, rather than just the result.
OPOF @26 talks about how structural design codes are formulated. In New Zealand we have a building code which deals with structure, waterproofing, plumbing etc,etc. Its focused on issues of safety and durability only not aesthetics etc,etc. Its essentially a set of regulations on what you can, and cant do.
The building code is prepared by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) . The building code sets objectives and performance criteria. The code allows for acceptable solutions to these criteria and objectives. These can be provided in different ways. One way is for an engineer or other expert to do a design from first principles and submit this to a local government council for approval by their technical people.
Another way is to base the design on prescriptive rules contained in the NZ Standards. Standards New Zealand are part of MBIE. Standards are written by technical committees of engineers, industry experts, councils, and other stakeholders. So there is industry input which is a little bit worrying but theres also something to be said by getting all stakeholders involved and this is a consultation issue. MBIE don't have to do what industry want.
The final building code is signed off by the Governments Cabinet. Which is essentially an executive body. It is not signed off by Parliament. We have a Building ACT which is quite general in nature, and voted on in parliament. The ACT ultimately requires a detailed building code.
If people hate what the government is doing with the building code they can of course elect another government.
Not wanting to restart my comments on the regulations related to the CO2 issue, but its just the huge implications of this issue that made me wonder if some sort of sign off of regulations should be done by parliament / congress. The Republicans talk about the major questions doctrine. But I can certainly see the arguments against all this and I dont have a firm view either way on the issue. One thing I think we all agree on and have firm views on is the details have to be left to the experts.
Given the endangerment finding is in considerable danger, fortunately with the climate change issue there are other ways to regulations of mitigating the problem such as carbon taxes, cap and trade and subsidies. I've always thought the regulatory approach to mitigate the climate problem, would become a complicated nightmare, and bogged down in arguments about who gets to sign off the regulations.
nigel @ 28:
What you describe for building codes is similar to what we have in Canada (where OPOF and I both live, albeit in different provinces). We develop national building codes, but provinces are the ones that control building practises, so they will make their own codes. They usually follow the national codes, but may adapt them to local circumstances.
To further devolve responsibility, provinces usually transfer the process of inspection, approval of plans, etc. down to the municipal level (cities, regions, etc.) Thus, it is local government that will have people that examine and approve plans, issue building permits, perform inspections, etc. In my province, electrical inspections are handled by a province-wide agency, but plumbing (including HVAC) and structural inspections are by the city. So, when I wanted to finish my basement, I had to get two permits and deal with two inspection processes: electrical, and everything else.
When you say "signed off by Governments Cabinet", I assume that you mean the collection of ministers appointed by the Prime Minister (PM) to run the different government departments. (NZ is like Canada - following the Westminster system. We have an elected House of Commons, and an appointed Senate. It looks like you only have an elected house?)
In practice, many decisions made within our government require sign-off by the Minister, but I don't think there are many (if any) that require sign-off by cabinet. As I mentioned in earlier comments, at this point a Minister is acting as a member of the Executive branch, using powers and authority granted to ministers by Parliament - i.e. acting according to law. If a Minister wants to do something that is outside their authority, they'd have to take it to cabinet and the PM and argue that it needs to be taken before Parliament and a new law passed. A common example of "not your authority" would be when a minister wants to do something that law says is the responsibility of a different department - or perhaps a provincial responsibility according to our Constitution.
Within our system, deputy ministers (DM) are the ones that run the day-to-day operation of the department. These appointments are at the will of the politicians (minister, cabinet, PM) and can (and will) be changed as political winds change. As you move down through the bureaucracy to assistant deputy ministers (ADM; there will be several in a department, responsible for different branches), directors general (DG), directors, managers, etc. At each lower level, there will be more people at that level, responsible for smaller parts of the system. At each level, their authority is limited to what the Minister delegates to that level, which is largely controlled by the rules set in place by Parliament (AKA "the law").
Only the few at the top are political appointees, though. ADMs, DGs, etc are expected to be non-partisan, merit-based appointments. Most will survive a change in government, as the political masters at the top accept that these people will give non-partisan advice (although the major job description remains "don't embarrass the minister").
Things fail (and there is worry about this) when political motives spread downwards into the "non-partisan" public service. Some politicians and voters that disagree with government actions are convinced that the entire public service consists of partisan hacks working for the other political party. (Some believe that the public service does nothing, and they should all be fired.) As distrust grows, and more and more appointees are selected based on political motives, the harder it is to get "expert advice".
We're wandering much off-topic here, but to tie this back into the OP and what is happening in the US and the EPA, the US is devolving into a situation where large swaths of the "public" service are becoming political service. The US cabinet is not elected - it is appointed by the president. In theory, Congress needs to approve these, but more and more confirmation votes go entirely down party lines. The president wants the authority to fire many employees in the public service, and has shown a propensity to replace them with political hacks. He wants them to swear an oath of allegiance to the president, not the constitution. He does not want the rule of law to constrain him, and he does not want a "public" service that serves the people or the law. IMHO, this is not a happy place to be.
The question of "who gets to sign off on the regulations?" is only one very small part of "who gets to decide the process by which the regulations are developed?" To me, the elected officials are already in control of defining the process. If they don't like the outcome, they can re-define the process, but turning final decisions into a political football that can ignore any sort of reasonable process is not a good way to go.
Bob Loblaw @ 02:00 AM on 26 February, 2026
BL: "What you describe for building codes is similar to what we have in Canada"
I have a vague recollection NZ actually modeled its building code on a combination of Canadas and Americas. Prior to about 1992 NZ didn't have a national building code as such. Local city councils had their own sets of rules on how houses had to be constructed. They did use the NZ standards which had been around for ages, and were effectively a national set of guidelines. But the net result is every city had its own building rules and they were all a bit different and confusing and they were very prescriptive.
In 1992 the government adopted a national building code with more of a performance based approach. Councils could not set local rules except in very limited circumstances. Its all been good but with some problems as well.
BL: "I had to get two permits and deal with two inspection processes: electrical, and everything else."
In NZ local city councils check drawings and issue building consents, and do all inspections including electrical. We are too small for regions. I think the sign off process has altered recently, I've lost track a bit.
BL: "When you say "signed off by Governments Cabinet", I assume that you mean the collection of ministers appointed by the Prime Minister (PM) to run the different government departments. (NZ is like Canada - following the Westminster system. We have an elected House of Commons, and an appointed Senate. It looks like you only have an elected house?)In practice, many decisions made within our government require sign-off by the Minister, but I don't think there are many (if any) that require sign-off by cabinet."
Yes we have the Westminster system. To be honest I'm not 100% sure whether something like a building code needs sign off by a minister or all of cabinet. I'm fairly sure some things need sign of by all of cabinet.
BL: "Some politicians and voters that disagree with government actions are convinced that the entire public service consists of partisan hacks working for the other political party......We're wandering much off-topic here, but to tie this back into the OP and what is happening in the US and the EPA, the US is devolving into a situation where large swaths of the "public" service are becoming political service."
I've only seen a very few people in NZ suggest the public service are partisan hacks. Generally appointments appear to be on merit. We certainly haven't had a leader like Trump making blatantly partisan appointments. But right now it would not be possible. The heads of public service departments are appointed by the Public Service Commissioner and his office. he PSC is appointed by the Governor General. NZ is still technically a monarchy. Politicians are consulted on appointments, but don't decide the appointments.
The problem is some of our conservative and right leaning politicians clearly admire some of what Trump has done. They don't embrace Trump like your conservative and right leaning politicians, but there is some leaning towards him particularly with Winston Peters of NZ First. But fortunately they would have a hell of a difficult job changing the system to allow them to make partisan appointments to the PS.
The thing with Trump is all he has to do is get personal control of the police and army by getting their loyalty, and he can do anything. I honestly think he's trying to do that, and ICE is the first move in that direction. Hopefully he's out of office before he can do this. Ok all getting a tad off topic. But Trump has such monumental influence I think its worth some discussion. I had decided to ignore reading about him in his second term, but hes inescapable. Agree with your views on him and his presidency.
nigel:
I think there are fairly well-established international codes for plumbing, electrical work, etc. But of course "international" does not mean "ubiquitous". And I have no idea of the history of what came first, what was based on what, etc., when it comes to national and regional codes.
Building codes are an interesting mix of prescriptive rules ("Thou shalt do ...") and more flexible statements ("Thou shalt hire an expert [engineer] who knows what is involved and can design something for you that won't fall down...") My basement permits required submitting drawings to the city on what I proposed to do. As I was just dividing up existing space with non-load-bearing walls, adding insulation, plumbing, etc., I did not need engineering drawings. I was leaving existing structure intact. Taking out existing walls would have required engineering calculations to confirm that I wasn't doing a Bad Thing™. (And a more thorough review by the permit department - likely by an engineer.)
Prescriptive rules work for well-established solutions. Flexibility is needed to make room for innovation and unexpected problems. An overly-restrictive set of rules leads to a situation where nobody is willing to make a decision and people look for rules to tell them what to do (too common in government, from my personal experience). It also leads to cases where people simply decide to ignore rules to get stuff done - and once they get used to breaking small rules, it gets easier to break big rules.
...but we're probably all familiar with the OceanGate submersible accident. The owner of the company thought he knew better than all the submersible experts and created an innovative design. (He also was innovative in finding a rationalization as to why he should not be subject to regulation by international standards of ship design.) What he succeeded in doing was turning himself and a few high-paying customers into puddles of goo on the ocean floor next to the Titanic.
With respect to the OP and pollution regulation in general, obviously the legislative branch needs to be involved in setting the rules. (And where a Constitution exists, the legislative branch needs to obey those rules and adhere to any process that is needed if they want to change the Constitution). But once the rules are set, the executive branch needs to follow those rules, and avoid political interference in decisions. The horse-trading at political levels is destructive: 'I'll vote to support your desire to avoid poisoning your voters if you vote to build missile silos in my district. If I don't get my missile silo, your people can die (and I don't care)."
As I mentioned earlier, there is the process, and the decision. A good process will lead to good decisions and respect for the process. A bad process will lead to bad decisions, and no respect for the process.
Right now, in the US, it appears that the main priority of Trump et al is to destroy the process, destroy any legal control over decision making, and let a very small segment of the population (Trump, his sycophants, and the puppet-masters controlling him) make all the decisions in their own interest. The idea of "separation of powers" and "checks and balances" seems to be headed towards a state of "I want the powers separated so I have all the power and you have none", and "I want the balance tilted entirely towards me, while you write the checks".
Canada is in a similar state to the way you describe NZ: mostly a professional public service appointed on merit; a judicial system appointed on merit, and independence from direct political control where needed. It is also our right wing that seems to have a higher concentration of "fire the public servants, get rid of regulation, more political control (or election) of judges, we admire Trump, etc." But it is still a minority (albeit a vocal one at times). Nowhere near as bad as the US, though.
Bob @31
Yes systems that rely purely on prescriptive rules are too restrictive and discourage innovation. That's one reason NZ moved away from local council prescriptive rules, and adopted The NZ building code. The NZBC is an objectives and performance criteria model, and allows for design form first principles for just about everything, with the design and calcs needing council approval, or sometimes it can be done by an independent engineer or other expert.
As I stated we can still use the NZ standards which are essentially prescriptive rules. They are generally applicable to small buildings only. People mostly design houses using the NZ Standards. Very few people design a house or part of a house from first principles because its too expensive and time consuming getting approvals. The exception is when you need some steel structure within a house, as this is outside the scope of The NZ Standards. But you would be brave to do it for the plumbing system. So innovation tends to be driven with large buildings where design from fist principles is more common.
And one of the ironies is even when one uses design from first principles, Council are very tough scrutinising this to protect their own backsides I suppose. There's no magic building regulations system, but NZs approach combines prescriptive rules and performance criteria, and is certainly ok, and probably as good as it gets, and yours sounds similar.
Yes Oceangate seemed like the designer was very arrogant and contemptuous of the rules and need for approvals. Reminds me of myself at a young age but most people grow up.
And yes I've also noticed Trump is destroying process and wants total power for himself. I think we are better off having checks and balances. The political decision making process in America and to a lesser extent in NZ, does seem to have been in a sort of grid lock in recent years but IMHO that's not so much due to a bad process, and checks and balances, as a very divided country not sure which way to go. Its like society is at some sort of tipping point. But I don't think we should be solving that problem by electing power mad tyrants and mad men.
New Zealands current right wing government is cutting regulations. Some of this looks ideologically driven. Some of its allegedly on wasteful regulations. Except the government hasn't found any significant examples. The government has also fired thousands of public servants. The excuses are waste, but they have never provided hard evidence. And another reason has been to cut government deficits, but government debt is really quite low as a % gdp, so it just looks ideologically driven.
Of course I fully acknowledge its possible to over regulate and have over staffed bureaucracies, but the government hasn't really provided great proof of either. If you want to see genuine over regulation parts of Europe might be examples. But really I'm not a fan of the very small government self regulation ideology, because it just doesn't work. History has repeatedly shown that. And theres plenty of evidence that regulations drive innovation.
I suppose its ultimately a balancing act between under and over regulation, but if we listen to experts and base decisions on evidence we can get that balance right. Its so sad watching Trumps America turn its back on experts, and on a need for regulations. That is never going to end well.
And as for putting someone like Robert Kenedy Jnr in charge of the health system. Words fail me.
"but hes inescapable", I'll add exhausting too. Australias most trusted tv network the ABC has an interview with its american editor John Lyons on an aussies perspective living in Washington DC. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljRSDUp5CqM
nigel @ 32:
Prescriptive rules only work for known problems. Setting objectives and performance criteria also requires some knowledge of the types of problems that might occur: the "known unknowns".
...but I want to respond to your statement at the end of paragraph 1: "...sometimes it can be done by an independent engineer or other expert."
The question then becomes "how do you identify an 'expert' in such a situation?" And this can bring us back to the question of the EPA or similar agencies and questions of pollution (and climate change). Who gets to be an expert, and how do we agree that such individuals are groups have actual expertise in the question at hand?
In the case of building structures, it's easy to say "an engineer". But how do we identify "engineer"? Many countries (Canada included) rely on two stages of accreditation: taking the required courses at an accredited school of engineering, followed by some on-the-job experience and eventual registration in the identified engineering association. That then leads to the status of "Professional Engineer" (P.Eng.) and a stamp you can apply to your work. That stamp tells everyone "this is a recognized expert". And when you screw up, you can lose that accreditation (similar to a lawyer being disbarred) - because all your work is accompanied by that stamp identifying you as the "expert" involved. And part of the professional ethics require that you restrict the use of your stamp to work that you actually are trained to do.
Science in general has no such formal professional designation. Anyone can claim to be a scientist. Yes, you can look at their academic training. Yes, you can look at their post-graduation activities to see what relevant experience they have. But there is no formal review of those qualifications. As a result, you can have atomic physicists or economists (to pull a couple of hypothetical examples out of a hat) claiming that they are more of an expert in climate science than someone who has spent decades training and researching in climate work.
That's not to say that people can't learn new things after they finish school - but we don't have any formal accreditation process where we can independently determine that they actually have learned what they claim to have learned. And when they screw up and get things horribly wrong, there is no "Professional Scientist" stamp that we can take away and tell them "you're not allowed to call yourself a P.Sci. any more". They are free to testify before congressional committees, write "reports" for sympathetic political hacks running government agencies that ignore the vast majority of the actual science, and continue to claim "we're the only scientists that understand this".
...which is why the process of developing and reviewing regulations and such needs to be well-designed to make sure that "experts" really are experts, and there is proper inclusion of the full range of reasonable opinions. The EPA had to pretty much bypass the "climate" report by the gang of five for some of those reasons: the legislation that governs the EPA specifies aspects of the process that were largely ignored by current EPA management in creating and guiding the gang of five's report.
In your closing paragraph, you say "...but if we listen to experts and base decisions on evidence we can get that balance right." That is the best scientific practise, where open discussion and being willing to change one's mind in response to a complete examination of the evidence. But when you get into what is called "lawyers' science", where people take an adversarial approach, only want the decision-maker to listen to their evidence and not the opponent's, etc., that won't happen. (My guess is that this is where Eric is thinking about the failures of the legal system to come to good scientific decisions, on the other US Climate regulations thread.)
...but people need to elect politicians that want the system to work that way. The US system has become toxically tribal.
Bob @ 35, totally get your point about the problem of scientists pontificating freely well outside their area of expertise and often getting things hopelessly wrong. Freemon Dyson comes to mind.
However I suppose the reason engineers are registered and accredited, is so the public can easily identify them as genuinely trained engineers, and because they are accountable for bridges that fall over etc,etc.
Scientists services are not used daily by the general public, and it would be absurd to hold them accountable for coming up with a theory that is later disproven. That would kill off the entire science profession. (Im not suggestig you would be proposing that, just raising one of the issues). So its probably something we are stuck with, unless perhaps scientists who are working in an advisory capacity, are required to have some sort of registration or accreditation. That would make sense. And that would help make them wise up and not talk complete nonsense like the gang of 5 producing the CWG report.
My understanding is the DOE / CWG report was dumped as a reason to get rid of the endangerment finding because it wasn't put out for proper consultation, and didnt include enough balance in the group and because there were so many scientific criticisms of the report it may not have worked to help overturn the endangerment finding. Theres been much discussion of all this over at realclimate.org. You can find the articles easily enough they are still near the top of the pile.
Some guy (or woman) called Data argued the entire DOE / CWG report was just a red herring to distract everyones attention from the allegedly more powerful general legal arguments against the endangerment but its just speculation. The report still had to be demolished both scientifically and on its process, because it alone could have overturned the endangerment finding.
nigel:
i agree that trying to create a formal accreditation process for scientists would be impractical. Just look at how difficult it is in academia to properly assess an academic career. Toss in a little "academic freedom" to encourage out-of-the-box thinking, and formalizing effective rules for accreditation becomes a snipe hunt. Peer review exerts some control, but it is not perfect. In the general science world, the person with repeat failures eventually gets ignored - by the science world. But they can often develop a successful career (success defined by making money and getting attention) by expanding their target audience to anyone with money or power that likes the message they are selling.
But the issue of how do we identify "experts" remains. In addition to engineers, we do have formal processes for lawyers, doctors (and other medical professions), pilots, etc. When I worked in Alberta, their engineering group covered engineers, geologists, and geophysicists. To a large extent, these professional organizations are granted an oversight duty by government, and become somewhat self-regulating.
When it comes to pollution controls and regulations, we already have a process where the regulators are supposed to consult with a variety of stakeholders: independent scientists, industry (with their own scientists), etc. These system must work, at least in part, on some sort of an honour system. Will The Powers That Be do an honest job of looking after the public interest, searching out a balanced and practical solution? Can we establish a practical system that will prevent the take-over by unscrupulous "special interests"? Can we create a system that most people will trust? (For the current EPA, the answers to those questions appear to be no, no, and hell no.)
Unfortunately, the current trend (especially in the US) is towards a combative, winner-take-all system, where anyone who's axe does not get ground accuses everyone else of being an unscrupulous special interest. And when an unscrupulous special interest group gets its hands on the reins of power, as is the case in the US, all heck breaks loose. The last resort there is probably the legal system, as ineffective as it can be in examining scientific questions. (Their voting system is on the verge of breaking down, too.)
I've seen the news stories over at RealClimate, and read some of the reports written by people such as Dessler. I rarely read any of the comments over there any more, as certain individuals have transformed the RC comment stream into a cesspool.
Bob@37, registration and accreditation of professionals is probably also an economic and philosophical issue. Generally the more restrictions you have on who can call themselves a particular expert or work in a profession, the more barriers to entry one creates and more you create a sort of entrenched privilege. So the idea seems to be reserve things like registration and accreditation for professions where safety and health implications are huge like engineering, electricians, and doctors. I think that does make some sense. Scientists work generally doesn't have massive health and safety implications for the public, at least tangible immediate ones.
The public regard scientists as experts and mostly still hold them in high esteem. Despite lawyers requiring some form of registration, they are not held in hugely high esteem by the public.
The problem if I read you right is scientists talking out of their area of expertise. But the guys that do this seem to be in a minority and its generally a youtube thing. It really annoys me, but its a hard one to solve. Even if scientists were accredited in their particular field, its probably not going to stop them pontificating on other fields, and many of these physicists who think they are self appointed experts on everything are retired guys so can do what they like. The only solution that seems viable to me is to teach the public better critical thinking skills, to recognise the fake experts or experts that are getting outside of their area.
BL: "When it comes to pollution controls and regulations, we already have a process where the regulators are supposed to consult with a variety of stakeholders: independent scientists, industry (with their own scientists), etc. These system must work, at least in part, on some sort of an honour system. Will The Powers That Be do an honest job of looking after the public interest, searching out a balanced and practical solution? Can we establish a practical system that will prevent the take-over by unscrupulous "special interests"? Can we create a system that most people will trust? (For the current EPA, the answers to those questions appear to be no, no, and hell no.)"
Yes the system relies on honour, honesty, civility, balance, good intent - all those unspoken ethical values. And unfortunately The Trump Administration seems intent on undermining all this. I can only hope the wider population revolt against this and claim back honour.
It is mystifying how an organisation like the EPA gets run by ex oil industry hacks and people of that sort. It makes no sense at all. You want bodies like that run by people with environmental or at least neutral business qualifications. If there is a concern about the organisation being over zealous environmentally then have some checks and balances against that. Have a watchdog committee or something. Scrutinise appointments to head such organsations to ensure they are not extremists environmentally.
Anyway you have touched on a whole range of issues I find interesting, but please feel free to ignore my rant if you are busy.
"Yes the system relies on honour, honesty, civility, balance, good intent - all those unspoken ethical values. And unfortunately The Trump Administration seems intent on undermining all this. I can only hope the wider population revolt against this and claim back honour."
Well said Nigelj, but really, the "seems" is only for those with blinkers on. The corrupt system in the USA has had its mask well and truly ripped off by this administration- will the people unite, maybe. Meanwhile another illegal war has started- what the fuck is wrong with their congress and media.
Look I get it, this is a science based blog site specifically for climate news,facts,explanations and more. The critical thinking discussions are enlightening and my own knowledge and questioning radar is usually always up and running now,especially now I have the time to research and reflect.
But our fight with denniers, with inequality, with corruption, with justice, encompasses all in one related struggle. Caring for our biosphere and everything in it means, I can't put my head in the sand anymore-maybe the older you get,the more empathy you get,I don't know.
"this nation is morally bankrupt and that's the most gentle way I can put it". My Australia has many echoes of what this man is explaining is our world now.www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUY6FzzRO6c
From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
One year after the movement-defining Stand Up For Science protest, organizers are returning to the streets on SATURDAY MARCH 7th, 2026 to save science, protect health, and defend democracy! This year, we are excited to officially endorse the Stand Up for Science National Day of Action and we encourage YOU to attend a rally or hold your own Pop-Up Protest.
Details of events, volunteer sign-up, and Pop-Up Protest information can be found on the Stand Up for Science website:
https://www.standupforscience.net/march7
First,thanks for that link JH,I believe protest marches by a countries citizens are the BEST form of action when dire changes are needed.They say "action speaks louder than words" and this Stand Up For Science protest is a needed inclusive march for all.
My first protest march was the School Strike 4 Climate here in Australia "the strikers are increasingly attracting the involvement of people who have never been involved in climate activism before and a diversity of young people from different geographic and ethnic backgrounds." Good luck with achieving your needed goals, Col.
Responding first to Bob Loblaw @27, adding to Bob and Nigel’s discussion, and adding to Other comments like prove we are smart:
My perspective can definitely be considered to be “...one where nobody has the right to force harm on others….a call to Freedom - each person needs to be free from others causing them harm.” It is aligned with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and related understandings like the Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 13 is Climate Action), the Planetary Boundaries, and key related understandings based on climate science like the Paris Agreement.
Note that the UDHR ‘tells people, especially leaders, that there are justified limits and expectations regarding how they act’ – they need to be governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. If they won’t responsibly self-govern that way they should expect to be limited by responsible leadership. That is what self-governing professional bodies, like professional engineers and medical professions, do. As a Professional Engineer one of my responsibilities was to be willing to ‘Say No, and explain way’ in response to a client’s unacceptable desire or demand.
I often sense that people want the freedom to believe and do as they please. And they want ‘a better present for themselves’ rather than ‘caring to develop the gift of a better future for others’. They are not interested in Inter-generational Equity (see the Wikipedia page). They discount the future (see Why environmental policy struggles to value the future earth.com, Eric Ralls, Jan 25, 2026. part of the listing of the 2026 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #05). They try to argue that they are harmed if others govern them in ways that limit the harm they can do, often arguing that they do not accept the understanding that what they want the freedom to do is harmful.
Telling people that ‘future generations will have to live without using fossil fuels because burning non-renewable resources cannot be continued indefinitely and that, in addition to fossil fuel use being unsustainable, it is harmful’ seems to really enrage some people. They often try to claim that the marketplace of business and politics should govern who gets to be harmful. I agree with them as long as the marketplaces are effectively governed by learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others rather than being compromised by harmful misleading competition for perceptions of superiority. That seems to make them angrier.
As a result I agree with the need for comprehensive consideration of all ‘stakeholders’ on an issue. I would add that ‘all future people’ need to be considered. And I would clarify that the evaluation of everyone’s potential for harm does not mean compromising harm reduction because of some stakeholders wanting to benefit from the harm.
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Related to prove we are smart’s comments,
it is becoming undeniable that the US is a failing state. It is failing to make its leaders face consequences for deliberately misleadingly pursuing benefit from causing more harm to Others, especially future generations.
The likes of Trump seem to act based on a world-view of negative-sum competition, harm is the major motivation for everyone. They believe everyone pursues personal benefit any way they can get away with. Their game-perspective is to benefit more from harming Others than Others harm them.
That is fundamentally contrary to being governed by the UDHR which is a positive-sum game world-view with the understanding that collective action based on learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others will result in sustainable improvements for everyone … except for those people who benefited from harmful behaviour in the past who may lose some developed perceptions of higher status (and deserve that loss of status).
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Regarding Inter-generational Equity.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and Diversity Equity Inclusion (see this Oxford Review item on Inter-generational Equity) are parts of the diversity of continuing to improve evidence-based understandings.
The SDGs are based on understanding that ‘future humans need to have equality of Rights and Freedom from harm’.
That exposes the harmful limitation of developed legal thinking, especially thoughts that ‘threat of legal consequences is all that is needed to ensure better, less harmful and more helpful, behaviour’. Legal remedy often requires ‘proof of actual harm done prior to (as the basis for) making the legal claim’. The threat of ‘Harms discovered later’ resulting in negative consequences for the people who benefited from the harm done in the past, or from actions that had higher risk of future harm, is a tragically weak deterrent.
The legal validity of Inter-generational Equity, especially regarding CO2 emissions pollution, is increasing, much to the chagrin of people who want the freedom to maximize their benefit from actions that harm Others. Legal implications of Inter-generational Equity are that leaders would be subject to consequences if they fail to act to equitably protect future generations from human caused climate change harms.
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Summary
The US has developed the ability to have the most helpful or most harmful leadership on this planet. Tragically, the voting population of the US has repeatedly proven that it likes its leadership to be Harmful To Others, including future generations of global humanity.
Clearly, the ‘Fix’ will require systemic changes to significantly increase the evidence-based justified Freedom of future generations of humanity from harm done by the unsustainable pursuits of benefit by current generations and their predecessors. The most harmful in the current generation need to most rapidly change their ways of living and profiting, even if it reduces their status relative to Others. And the biggest current day beneficiaries of the history of CO2 pollution harm owe the most towards repairing the damage done and helping Others adapt to the harmful changes that have already been caused.
One helpful action would be effective penalties for elected representatives and appointed representatives who are discovered to be misleading.
It is no surprise that people wanting to benefit from being harmful dislike increased awareness and understanding of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Inter-generational Equity; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Sustainable Development Goals; Planetary Boundaries; and Climate Science and so much more. All that pesky Wokeness is likely to result in ‘Less Freedom for them to do what they want to do … from their perspective … the End Times are Coming.
OPOF was talking about people who ignore the best interests of future generations. The expert interview below is relevant and important and does it related to climate change. Its a long read but worth it. Its from NPR. Ive made a few of my own comments at the end. The article:
Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert argues that humans are exquisitely adapted to respond to immediate problems, such as terrorism, but not so good at more probable, but distant dangers, like global warming. He talks about his op-ed piece which appeared in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times.
The interview:
NEAL CONAN, host:
In an op-ed in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues that human brains are adapted to respond to some threats more than to others. For example, he says, we take alarm at terrorism, but much less to global warming, even though the odds of a disgruntled shoe bomber attacking our plane are, he claims, far longer than the chances of the ocean swallowing parts of Manhattan.
And the reason is biology, the human brain evolved to respond to immediate threats but may completely miss more gradual warning signs. If you have questions about how and why our brains got wired this way or about its implications, 800-989-8255, or e-mail us, talk@npr.org.
Daniel Gilbert is a professor of psychology at Harvard University, author of the book Stumbling On Happiness. You can link to his op-ed and to all previous Opinion Pages at the TALK OF THE NATION page at npr.org.
Daniel Gilbert joins us now from his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Nice to have you on the program today.
Professor DANIEL GILBERT (Psychology, Harvard University): Thanks so much for having me.
CONAN: Now, you say that we need to put a threat, a face on a threat, in order to truly perceive it.
Prof. GILBERT: Well, that’s true. I mean, you know, look, if alien scientists were trying to design something to exterminate our race, they would know that the best offense is one that does not trigger any defense. And so they would never send little green men in spaceships. Instead, they would invent climate change, because climate change has four properties that allow it to get in under the brain’s radar, if you will.
There are four things about it that fail to trigger the defensive system that so many other threats in our environment do trigger.
CONAN: As you point out in your piece, our brains are exquisitely tuned to, if we see a baseball coming at our head, get out of the way.
Prof. GILBERT: Exactly so. So that’s one of the features of climate change that makes it such an insidious threat, is that it’s long-term. It’s not something that threatens us this afternoon, but rather something that threatens us in the ensuing decades. Human beings are very good at getting out of the way of a speeding baseball. Godzilla comes running down the street, we know to run the other way. We’re very good at clear and present danger, like every mammal is. That’s why we’ve survived as long as we have.
But we’ve learned a new trick in the last couple of million years – at least we’ve kind of learned it. Our brains, unlike the brains of almost every other species, are prepared to treat the future as if it were the present. We can look ahead to our retirements or to a dental appointment, and we can take action today to save for retirement or to floss so that we don’t get bad news six months down the line. But we’re just learning this trick. It’s really a very new adaptation in the animal kingdom and we don’t do it all that well. We don’t respond to long-term threats with nearly as much vigor and venom as we do to clear and present dangers.
CONAN: So a lot of us thought evolution would reduce us to four toes or maybe four fingers. You say what it in fact has meant is that we’ve developed delayed gratification.
Prof. GILBERT: Well, yes indeed. I mean, evolution has optimized our brain for the Pleistocene. I mean, you’d be, you know, if we put you back three million years, you’re going to be the most adapted animal walking the earth. The problem is that our environment has changed so rapidly because we’ve got this great big brain so we could navigate our ancestral environment, and lo and behold, what did we do? We created an entirely new environment to which our brain is not perfectly adapted.
CONAN: We’re talking with Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard University, on the TALK OF THE NATION Opinion Page. If you’d like to join us, 800-989-8255, e-mail, talk@npr.org. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
Another requirement for that human response, that triggered response, is some sort of moral outrage, you say.
Prof. GILBERT: You’re right. And so I started by saying there were four, and then I talked about one, so what are the other three? The other three are, A) the source of the threat should be human rather than inanimate; B) there should be a moral component; C) as we just talked about, it should be short-term rather than long-term; and D) if you want the human brain to respond, you really want to make sure that the threat is sudden rather than gradual.
So you asked about the moral component. There’s a lot of energy these days in our Congress, and indeed in our nation, devoted to what really our strictly moral issues. There’s very little doubt that many people will be injured by burning flags or gay sex, and yet we are up in arms about flag burning and gay marriage. And the reason is that these offend many people at the moral level. We’re very good at taking umbrage. We’re just not very good at taking action against things that don’t create – that don’t arouse moral emotions. And you know, climate change just doesn’t.
As I say in my essay, if, you know, if eating, if the practice of eating kittens were the thing responsible for climate change, we’d have people massing in the street in protest right now, because eating kittens is such a morally reprehensible action.
CONAN: Yet we see things like, obviously a terrorist attack, a human action, really centers everybody’s attention. Tens of thousands of people die on American highways every year and nobody notices.
Prof. GILBERT: Well, you’re exactly right. I mean, one of the things that the human brain is specialized for is other human beings. They are the greatest source of reward and punishment in most of our environments. We’re a highly social mammal, and our brains are awfully good at looking for, thinking about, and remembering any sign of other people and their plans and their intentions. That’s why we see faces in the clouds but we never see clouds in peoples’ faces. If you play people white noise for long enough, they begin to hear voices in it. But they never hear white noise in voices.
So we’re looking. It’s as if the brain is tuned in to the signal of other human action. And that’s why when other people do things to us, we’re very, very quick to respond. We respond to terrorism with unrestrained venom and with great force, just as our ancestors would have responded to, you know, a man with a big stick. The problem is climate change doesn’t have a human face. It’s not an Iraqi with a big mustache. It’s not somebody we can villainize. It’s not a man with a box cutter. And so if there’s no one to vilify, there’s no face to put it to, it’s hard for human beings to get very excited about it.
CONAN: Let’s get a call in from Guillermo, Guillermo calling from Raleigh, North Carolina.
GUILLERMO (Caller): Hi.
CONAN: Hi.
GUILLERMO: I guess my point is similar along the lines – somewhere along the way in school I heard a story basically along the lines of more complex issues humans don’t process that well yet. So, for example, if a person had to hear all of the news events that occurred on the planet earth in a single day, your brain wouldn’t be able to take it. And I just wanted him to see if there’s any truth in this, or…
CONAN: Does quality relate to our quality of alarm?
Prof. GILBERT: Well, you bet it does. I mean, climate change in some ways is a very simple issue. But those who profit from not taking action against global warming have turned it into a complicated issue. Why have the opponents – and believe it or not, there are opponents of action against global warming – why are the opponents turning it into a complicated issue? Well, as our caller well knows, if we can make this complicated, enough people will throw up their hands and say, you know, scientists, they all disagree. Who knows what we can really do about this?
You know what? Scientists don’t disagree about this, and what we can do is very, very clear.
CONAN: Scientists don’t necessarily agree on the cause of it. They do agree that it’s happening. Anyway, Guillermo, thanks very much for the call.
GUILLERMO: Thank you very much.
Prof. GILBERT: Well, scientists agree to an enormous extent on the cause of it. You know, it’s interesting, when you look at scientific articles on global warming, there’s enormous consensus. When you look at news articles on global warming, about half of them mention that there isn’t much consensus. It really just isn’t so. Scientists are in vast agreement about the causes of global warming, as much as they’re in agreement about the dangers of cigarette smoking. You could say scientists don’t all agree, and I’m sure there’s somebody out there who’s still saying it doesn’t cause cancer, but by and large…
CONAN: So there you have an evil human face you can put on this. Those who are dastardly working towards profit 50 years hence.
Prof. GILBERT: You see, that’s how I’m getting myself to respond.
CONAN: Thanks very much for being with us, Daniel Gilbert. We appreciate your time today.
Prof. GILBERT: My pleasure. Thanks.
CONAN: Daniel Gilbert’s op-ed was this week in the Los Angeles Times. It’s Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Threats.
Again, if you’d like to read the piece, there’s a link to it at our webpage. Just go to npr.org and go to the TALK OF THE NATION page. Also there, all of the other previous Opinion Pages on TALK OF THE NATION.
I’m Neal Conan. This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News, in Washington.
Copyright © 2006 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at http://www.npr.org for further information.
https://www.npr.org/2006/07/03/5530483/humans-wired-to-respond-to-short-term-problems
My comment: I’m not a doomer. I dont think such findings mean we are locked into inaction, or that we are doomed. Perhaps we can overcome these impediments, and renewable energy is gaining traction on its merits and low costs anyway. But its just something we need to understand. And I think some of us are more reactive to distant future events that others, for some reason that seems deeply seated. Like personality differences.
nigel @ 38:
Going back in history, many trades operated guilds that helped identify skilled craftsmen. But as you point out, there is a fine line between controlling entry to the association to ensure that the people in it are truly skilled versus controlling entry to maintain some sort of privilege and exclusivity (and economic advantage). When it comes to regulation, the equivalent to the latter is regulatory capture (which I mentioned in #10). Someone has to watch the watchers, to make sure that the system is kept honest.
Even for something like engineering, where a person is accredited to design structures, there is a dependency on other accreditation processes. An engineer designing a building does not design and test the beam that will be used - they buy one "off the rack" from a company that makes them and provides specifications of the load it can handle. And that company will need to test their beams according to some sort of independent methodology developed by an accredited standards association.
I would argue that climate change is indeed a topic that has massive health and safety implications for the public, but as you say it is a much less tangible and immediate than things such as health outcomes, electrical safety, etc. The current EPA has codified this by barring the use of any indirect costs in the economic analysis of regulations.
The implications that can arise from climate change are also influenced by many other factors, which makes it easy for the contrarians to engage in a variation of whataboutism - assigning blame of any observed bad outcomes on something else. The tobacco industry perfected this technique in delaying actions against tobacco's health impacts.
Another issue with something like climate change is that is it not a well-defined target zone of study. Atmospheric science will help you understand why a region's climate is what it is, and how it might change, but to understand sea level rise you need to know oceanography. And to know food production implications, you need to know agricultural science. And to know flooding risks, you need to know hydrology. And to know ecosystem stresses, you need to know ecology. Thus "climate change" is by its nature an extremely multidisciplinary subject. You need a lot of people cooperating to put it all together. No single person can do it all alone, and the fake skeptics that act as if they know it all are clearly working outside their area of expertise. The width of the “climate change” net can be seen by the tremendous variety of references listed in things like the IPCC reports. The shallowness of the contrarians' analysis can be seen in the highly-selective and self-referential lists of publications they include in their reports.
In the current Trump administration, the phrase "conflict of interest" takes on new meaning - "Only my interests matter, and the only conflict is how others dare to challenge me".
OPOF @ 43:
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is worth reading in its entirety. Article 29 includes:
Too many people think that freedom does not include any duty or responsibility towards others.
Timothy Snyder's book On Freedom is also worth reading, and discusses at length how an individual's freedom is tied to the actions of the community they live in. Snyder distinguishes between "freedom to" and "freedom from". Freedom is not just the absence of things such as regulation, occupation, oppression, or government. To be free, you also have to have an environment/community that enables you to do things. In the preface of the book (p xiv), Snyder says:
In other words, we are in this together.
nigel @ 44:
More grist for the reading list.... Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. It covers the two modes of thinking - quick, but often unreliable, reaction to immediate dangers (handy when running away from that rustling in the bushes might save you from getting eaten), versus slow, analytical thinking that is needed to accurately deal with distant dangers. Much the same story as that interview you quote.
Certain politicians excel at triggering that fast, emotional response. Unfortunately, they have also learned how to use that to manipulate people.
Responding to nigelj’s comment @44, and Bob Loblaw's @46 and 47,
Regarding the statement that “...some of us are more reactive to distant future events that others, for some reason that seems deeply seated. Like personality differences.”
My way of saying it would be:
Some people give more consideration to distant future events that others. For some reason some people are powerfully motivated against being concerned for the future. It may be because of genetic predisposition, like personality differences (the nature side of nature vs nurture).
I think it is more likely to be differences of upbringing (the nurture side), the culture people grow up in, encouraging or discouraging primal instinctive drives for self-interest, what they developed a liking for.
Lots of research indicates that altruistic tendencies are innate in humans and can be seen when they are young (Do an internet search for “research on altruism in young children”).
A key understanding is that the success of humans is most likely due to the ability of humans to learn about what is harmful and what is helpful and thoughtfully evaluate how alternative actions would produce different future outcomes with the following important distinctions made between possible future outcomes:
The long-term success, survival, of a group or individual understandably requires governing by proactive learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others. This learning is more challenging than regression into primal instinctive anxiety. It is more challenging when misleading marketers can benefit from triggering primal instinctive anxiety.
Any individual or group that fails to self-govern that way likely has no future regardless of temporary perceptions-of-the-moment of success, superiority or Winning.
Opposition to reducing the many understandable harms and risk of harm due to fossil fuel burning caused global warming and climate change is potentially the greatest ‘Future threats’ to humanity. Undeniably the people who want to maintain and increase perceptions of superiority developed because of the harmful use of fossil fuels consider any action to limit that ‘future threat to humanity’ to be an ‘immediate threat to them’.
Bob Loblaw @46,
I have read, and would encourage others to read, Timothy Snyder's books ... not just On Freedom.
This long-read assessment of Trump's ongoing attack on climate science is one you will want to bookmark for future reference.
This "pull-no-punches" analysis is authored by Robert Kopp, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University. He is the co-author of Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus and a contributor to the Fourth National Climate Assessment and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report.
Trump Is Attacking Climate Science. Scientists Are Fighting Back
It’s easy, looking at the past year, to see the damage the administration has done. But researchers are also stepping up, trying to fill the gaps.by Robert Kopp, The New Republic (TNR), Mar 1, 1016
https://newrepublic.com/article/207000/trump-climate-science-funding