Atmospheric scientist here. Let me tell you what was actually "slashed" today.
Slashed: The Endangerment Finding — a 200-page scientific review upheld by the Supreme Court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and reaffirmed by the National Academies of Sciences in 2025.
Slashed: The legal authority to regulate carbon from cars, power plants, and factories. All of it. Gone in one afternoon.
Now here's what you're "saving":
Yesterday Trump ordered the Pentagon — the largest energy consumer on Earth — to buy coal electricity.
Coal costs $69–$169/MWh.
Wind costs $27–$53/MWh.
Solar costs $38–$78/MWh.
99% of U.S. coal plants cost more to run than replacing them with brand-new solar or wind.
That's your tax dollars buying the most expensive electricity on the market. By executive order. While the Peabody Energy CEO stood in the room.
And the human cost of what you're "saving"?
460,000 American deaths linked to coal pollution in 20 years. Coal PM2.5 is 2.1x deadlier than other air pollution. (Henneman et al., Science, 2023)
All to protect an industry that employs 44,000 people total. Clean energy employs 3.5 million.
If you don't want to read the longest Twitter thread I've ever written, you can also just go watch this video! https://t.co/zHR9pDT7il
If you do, here it is. I only spent 2 hours writing it because I feel like this is extremely important.
Something remarkable from the @nytimes this day: an account of how climate change is damaging each of the 193 member nations of the UN.
This is the kind of journalism we need
https://t.co/T9CsgM0P62
“Regardless of the outcome today or Wednesday, I know we did the legal, moral, and ethical thing that night.”
This is Jonathan Mattingly, one of the officers who fired his gun on the night Breonna Taylor was killed, presenting himself and the cops as victims
As we commemorate #Earthday50 let's not celebrate too long because much work is still needed to ensure equal protection and equal enforcement of environmental laws and regulations. Let's also recommit to core principles and practices of justice, fairness and equity.