There are moments in history when silence is not neutral. When pretending not to know is the most violent thing a nation can do. We are standing at such a moment now.
I was there in 2009, when the Environmental Protection Agency issued a formal declaration grounded in science, shaped by decades of research, and echoed by communities who’d been breathing injustice for generations. It’s called the Endangerment Finding. It simply states that greenhouse gases — like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — threaten the health and welfare of current and future generations. With that one declaration, the government admitted something our ancestors already knew deep in their lungs: pollution kills, and climate change is no accident — it’s policy, profit, and power playing god with our survival.
It will not be the politicians or polluters who pay the price. It will be the rest of us.
That declaration gave the EPA the legal authority — and moral obligation — to act. To regulate emissions. To stand between Big Oil and the bodies of children with asthma. To recognize that melting glaciers and flooded streets are not random weather, but human consequences. It gave us hope that science would be more than a footnote in a political debate.
Now, that hope is under assault.
In 2025, America continues to see a scorched-earth approach to science and truth by the Trump administration. They are now placing a crosshair on the Endangerment Finding itself. This administration’s current set of actions isn’t just about dismantling environmental regulations. It’s about denying reality, un-writing the future, and silencing the warning bells of our time. In its place, they offer lies dressed as liberty, deregulation disguised as freedom, and fossil fuel profits parading as patriotism.
Make no mistake: Reversing the Endangerment Finding would be the equivalent of yanking out the foundation of the house while claiming you’re remodeling. It would erase the federal government’s obligation to regulate the very emissions causing this crisis. And in that vacuum, corporate pollution would flourish, while human life wither — especially in the communities already pushed to the margins.
Those without generational wealth cannot move to higher ground or buy filters for the air.
Let’s talk about who gets hurt.
It’s not the CEOs sitting in air-conditioned boardrooms. It’s not the politicians whose families will evacuate by private jet when the next superstorm hits. It’s the mother in South Phoenix whose son can’t sleep through the night without wheezing. It’s the elder in Appalachia whose well water tastes like diesel. It’s the Black child in Louisiana who thinks smoke in the sky is just part of what it means to grow up.
These are the communities that have always borne the brunt of environmental injustice. Poor communities. Black and brown communities. Tribal nations. Immigrants. Those without generational wealth cannot move to higher ground or buy filters for the air. If the Endangerment Finding is rescinded, these communities will suffer first and suffer worst.
And who benefits?
Follow the money. Oil companies. Coal barons. Gas conglomerates. They win by weakening science and strengthening silence. They win when no one is watching. They win when the people’s voices are buried beneath lobbying dollars and propaganda.
The economic cost of inaction will bankrupt us.
But there’s another cost, beyond the moral one. The economic cost of inaction will bankrupt us. Climate-related disasters in the U.S. alone cost more than $165 billion in 2022, and the numbers are only rising. Fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts — each one a result of neglect. Each one is a tax on our denial. The more we ignore, the more we pay. And it’s not just money — it’s public health. It’s premature births, cardiovascular disease, mental trauma, food insecurity, displaced families, and poisoned air.
And then there’s the cost we cannot measure yet — the debt we are writing into the lungs of our children and their children. A future where summers become death sentences. Where crops fail more than they feed. Where water is more scarce than clean. Reversing the Endangerment Finding isn’t just a policy shift — it’s a betrayal. A betrayal of the next generation, and the ones after that. We’re not handing them a planet — we’re giving them a problem so monstrous we didn’t have the courage to face it ourselves.
But here’s the thing about tipping points: they go both ways.
We are still — barely — on the edge where we can choose a different path. The science is more precise than ever. The technology exists. The solutions are ready. What we need is the political will and the moral clarity to say enough. Enough denial. Enough delay. Enough pretending this house isn’t on fire. If we hold the Endangerment Finding as sacred — not just as a legal document but as a promise — then we can still build a future from its foundation.
But if we let it fall, the silence that follows will be deafening.
And it will not be the politicians or polluters who pay the price. It will be the rest of us, coughing in the rubble, wondering why we let them turn off the alarm.
Dr. Mustafa Ali is a poet, thought leader, strategist, policymaker, and activist committed to justice and equity. He is the founder of The Revitalization Strategies.
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