Trump Declares CO2 Harmless and Destroys US Climate Protections
Published in Frankfurter Rundschau
(Germany) on 13 February 2026
by Sereina Donatsch (link to
original)
The president is undermining the foundations of remaining climate protections in the U.S. — a fatal sign.
Declaring that greenhouse gases are not harmful to life is fatal — in the truest sense of the word. That is exactly what President Donald Trump is doing by overturning a 2009 classification by the Environmental Protection Agency that held carbon dioxide emissions endanger people and the common good.
Nearly every U.S. climate protection policy is based on it. Without it, the government lacks legal basis for emission limits on cars, factories, and industrial plants. It leaves U.S. agencies without the tools to fight the greatest threat of our time: global warming. Trump himself lauded the move as "the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history," and promised businesses and consumers savings of some $1.3 trillion. He claimed a new car will be $2,400 cheaper on average.
This sham is effective, especially where rising prices are putting pressure on people, where pickup trucks are a work tool, not a status symbol, where climate policy is considered a project of the urban elite. But Trump’s calculation is missing the real costs of the climate crisis. Since 2010, extreme weather events in the U.S. have caused approximately $1.9 trillion in damage, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which is itself a target of Trump’s cuts. More than 7,700 people have died. The total increases with every record-breaking year, every flood, every fire.
2024 was the warmest year since weather recordkeeping began. In 2025, wildfires ravaged parched landscapes in the greater Los Angeles area. Severe flooding in Texas that summer claimed more than 100 lives. In this light, talking about “cutting costs” is not just mathematically wrong; it’s cynical.
But the consequences extend far beyond the U.S. When the president of the world’s most powerful country downplays greenhouse gases, he also sends a signal to political leaders of other countries. In India, for example, cities with millions of inhabitants are choked by smog every winter, and particulate matter costs hundreds of thousands of lives.
When Washington downplays emissions, other governments table regulation, dismiss criticism as alarmist, and point to the American example. When the U.S. backpedals, the pressure on everyone else to act decreases.
With this decision, Trump is leading an attack on the health of millions of people and simultaneously undermining a central principle of democracy: Political action must follow the facts.
Declaring that greenhouse gases are not harmful to life is fatal — in the truest sense of the word. That is exactly what President Donald Trump is doing by overturning a 2009 classification by the Environmental Protection Agency that held carbon dioxide emissions endanger people and the common good.
Nearly every U.S. climate protection policy is based on it. Without it, the government lacks legal basis for emission limits on cars, factories, and industrial plants. It leaves U.S. agencies without the tools to fight the greatest threat of our time: global warming. Trump himself lauded the move as "the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history," and promised businesses and consumers savings of some $1.3 trillion. He claimed a new car will be $2,400 cheaper on average.
This sham is effective, especially where rising prices are putting pressure on people, where pickup trucks are a work tool, not a status symbol, where climate policy is considered a project of the urban elite. But Trump’s calculation is missing the real costs of the climate crisis. Since 2010, extreme weather events in the U.S. have caused approximately $1.9 trillion in damage, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — which is itself a target of Trump’s cuts. More than 7,700 people have died. The total increases with every record-breaking year, every flood, every fire.
2024 was the warmest year since weather recordkeeping began. In 2025, wildfires ravaged parched landscapes in the greater Los Angeles area. Severe flooding in Texas that summer claimed more than 100 lives. In this light, talking about “cutting costs” is not just mathematically wrong; it’s cynical.
But the consequences extend far beyond the U.S. When the president of the world’s most powerful country downplays greenhouse gases, he also sends a signal to political leaders of other countries. In India, for example, cities with millions of inhabitants are choked by smog every winter, and particulate matter costs hundreds of thousands of lives.
When Washington downplays emissions, other governments table regulation, dismiss criticism as alarmist, and point to the American example. When the U.S. backpedals, the pressure on everyone else to act decreases.
With this decision, Trump is leading an attack on the health of millions of people and simultaneously undermining a central principle of democracy: Political action must follow the facts.
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