Burning Questions: The EPA repealed the endangerment finding. Who are the economic winners and losers?

Earlier this month the Trump administration revoked the endangerment finding, which gave the federal government a legal basis for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The move is already being disputed in court. If the repeal is successful, who are the economic winners and losers?

“I think the big loser is really the American people,” said Chris Field, the director of Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, and a professor in Earth system science and biology. The repeal of the Endangerment Finding means that the EPA no longer has fuel emission standards for passenger cars and trucks, which could incentivize consumers to keep purchasing gas-guzzling cars, instead of electric vehicles. “I think that repealing the endangerment finding signals a stepping away from the biggest economic opportunity and the biggest leadership opportunity of the 21st Century” said Field.

The Trump administration says deregulating fuel emissions will save consumers over $1 trillion.

“That is not true at all,” said Rachel Muncrief, interim CEO of the International Council on Clean Transportation, “it's costing consumers billions of dollars.” She explained that the price of EVs is expected to come down in the next few years, which meant consumers would be spending much less on fuel. “The biggest winner here is the oil and gas industry,” Muncrief said, “now consumers are going to be spending a lot more money on fuel. Consumers were actually set to save something along the lines of $60 billion a year in fuel because of those regulations. Those are now wiped out.” 

There are also larger public health consequences to not curbing contributors of climate change, like fuel emissions. “The benefits of avoiding climate change [are] much larger than the cost savings,” Chris Field explained, “the health consequences of climate change have just become increasingly clear, and they include not only effects of extreme heat on excess mortality [but also] they include effects of extra particulates from wildfire smoke, extra mortality from severe storms and extra mortality that's associated with conflict and dislocation from high temperatures that are putting people on the move around the world.”

To hear more about the impact of repealing the endangerment finding click the player above.