EPA rollbacks: Jedi mind tricks vs. science

“These aren’t the droids you are looking for.” Obi-Wan Kenobi’s words distort the reality the Imperial Stormtrooper is seeing, causing him to overlook R2-D2 and C-3PO and allow them to escape. Reality distortion makes great science fiction but is terrible for our health and economy.

With its repeal of the Endangerment Finding and its rollback of the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS) rule, Trump’s highly politicized Environmental Protection Agency is attempting Jedi mind tricks instead of using science to improve our lives.

As I write this, headlines report the hottest March temperatures on record, a disastrous ski season, and patterns portending another terrible fire season, yet Trump and his EPA dismantle essential protections.

Politicians have attempted manipulation before, so why is this news? The Clean Air Act was thoughtfully designed to be science-based and health-centric. The 1970 Clean Air Act is a product of incredible bipartisan leadership (passing 73-0 in the Senate and 375-1 in the House) and was carefully crafted with a broad scope so Congress would not need to pass new laws each time new toxic pollutants were identified. It has been a resounding success. A 2020 analysis showed it has prevented 370,000 premature deaths and saved $3.8 trillion dollars. That’s a 30-to-1 return on investment.

In 2007, the irrefutable evidence for human-caused climate change and its adverse impacts on our health and economy led to a Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gas emissions should be covered by the Clean Air Act. The EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding acknowledged the harms done by greenhouse gasses and added new protections to safeguard the public. Science has continued to advance our understanding of how pollutants harm us, and this led the EPA to improve Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule in 2024.

I haven’t provided a listing of the harms because I believe that everyone knows mercury, arsenic, soot, particulates, sulfur dioxides, oxides of nitrogen, ozone, carbon dioxide, methane, arsenic or the other pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act damage our health and economies. If you aren’t familiar, just come to any hospital, emergency room or pediatric clinic and you can see people suffering firsthand.

The Clean Air Act has worked so well because it was carefully designed to leverage science, technology, and innovation for the common good. Industry has sometimes been willing partners, but regulatory safeguards are essential because our general health and economic well-being often don’t coincide with short-term corporate profits.

Trump and those carrying out his directives in the EPA would like you to believe their innate brilliance transcends all the scientific facts and shows them a path to abandon safeguards while promising us great health and well-being. Simply by chanting “climate change is a hoax, climate change is a hoax” (these are not the droids you are looking for), they count on us not believing what we plainly see and what has been proven by thousands of scientific studies.

During his election campaign, Trump gathered fossil fuel executives together at Mar-a-Lago and asked them for a billion dollars with the implicit understanding they would greatly benefit from his actions while president. Once president, he and his loyalists ignored the science, the health and economic benefits, the technological innovations and dismantled key life-saving regulations to benefit his fossil fuel benefactors.

While the EPA was working to find a way to abandon the 2024 MATS rule it decided to simply stop considering the economic benefits of improving health when setting air pollution standards; instead, they will only consider the economic costs to industry. How can the EPA do this, when its mission is “to protect human health and the environment?”

Maybe Trump and his cronies aren’t using Jedi mind tricks (after all, Jedi are supposed to be “the good guys”). Maybe Trump is using old-fashioned corruption to line his pockets with fossil fuel money before the industry collapses, as market trends indicate it will. In the meantime, our collective health — and the regulations that seek to protect us — will suffer. Please contact your members of congress and insist the Clean Air Act is used to keep us safe and healthy.

Dr. Robert K. Merchant is a pulmonologist in Billings and a member of Montanans for Affordable Energy.