“Each of us all across this great land has a stake in maintaining and improving environmental quality, clean air and clean water, the wise use of our land, the protection of wildlife and natural beauty, parks for all to enjoy,” Nixon said not long after EPA’s launch. “These are part of the birthright of every American. To guarantee that birthright, we must act and act decisively. It is literally now or never.”

For 55 years, the agency has tried to ensure that the most dangerous pollutants, many of which come from energy, chemical and industrial plants, were monitored and regulated to reduce human health problems and preserve a cleaner environment. But last week, current EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who was born a decade after its creation, unveiled the most dramatic changes in EPA’s history–ones that arguably abandon the “protection” part of its name. 

Among other things, he wants to roll back or review stricter pollution rules for power plants, oil and gas production, as well as guidelines for wastewater, mercury and toxic air pollutants from dirty coal plants. Critically, he also seeks to abandon the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the basis under which EPA regulates harmful greenhouse gases that are helping overheat the planet and warping weather patterns. 

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” Zeldin said.

His moves, which include closing the agency’s environmental justice offices to help poor communities that are among the most impacted by industrial pollution, align with the Trump Administration’s plan to boost oil and gas production–so far with little consideration for the impact on land, air and water, human health and the climate–while pulling support for renewable energy. But they’re a radical break from the Republican Party’s long and surprisingly strong environmental track record. 

In addition to Nixon’s EPA, President Teddy Roosevelt created the national parks, George H.W. Bush strengthened the Clean Air Act and George W. Bush set tougher rules on diesel truck emissions and the first guidelines for mercury pollution from power plants.

The environmental policy pivot by the Trump administration also has massive implications for the country’s ability to compete in the fast-growing global market for clean energy. China dominates in the production of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric cars. Tougher environmental rules in the EU–combined with a move away from reliance on Russian oil and gas–spurred a huge shift to renewable power there. Multibillion-dollar investments in the U.S. in clean energy, aided by federal programs Trump is gutting, created tens of thousands of jobs, especially in politically conservative states in the South and Midwest, and made renewable energy the fastest-growing source of new electricity.

The EPA’s Zeldin celebrated his changes as “the greatest day of deregulation” the U.S. has seen, but there’s a strong argument he’s making a massive economic, health and environmental blunder. 

What does the dramatic shift in U.S. policy away from clean energy and climate concerns at the federal level mean for the push to decarbonize energy and industries?

The train of decarbonization has left the station. We're no longer asking the question: will the train arrive? The question we're asking is: when will it arrive? I think it's a temporal thing. And this is because carbon management, at large, is a transformative undertaking that implies a (second) industrial renaissance. We're talking about transforming entire industries from a base that we established two centuries ago to a different base. 

This renaissance also involves transforming our ability to control energy. The last 200-plus years have been based upon the age of thermochemical transformations: our ability to control and direct heat to do useful things. Heat has been wonderful. It has warmed us. It's kept us safe. It's allowed us to turn iron into steel. The challenge with heat is that it's associated with carbon emissions from the combustion of a hydrocarbon fuel. So the other part this draws a vector towards is electrification. Clean electricity is really what we need, and the control of electrons and the control of chemical reactions by electrons is what we need to think about.  

Is the goal also to find ways to not just reduce emissions but eliminate carbon already in the atmosphere and oceans?

We're also asking an important macro question about what we really mean by climate change mitigation. For example, if you're a wealthy country with a high per capita GDP, you might ask yourself the question, implicitly, maybe not explicitly: is adaptation cheaper than mitigation? We have not characterized these positions well enough yet, although arguably, in the longer term, mitigation is vital and needs to accompany adaptation. 

In a different direction, we are also asking: Is decarbonization via emissions mitigation the correct answer in the developing world (where infrastructure is yet being built and to be built) versus in the developed world? In other words: Is there a binary separation here, depending upon our local measure of economic affordability? Fundamentally, the challenge we have is a challenge of affordability. If decarbonization was easy and cheap, we'd have done it already. The fact that we have not suggests it's very hard and very expensive. 

We need to be thoughtful about this and think very closely about affordability and accessibility, as well as technological and geographic feasibility. We need to find pragmatic solutions that are scalable, flexible and favorable to business. 

The last piece we need to think about with regard to decarbonization and climate change mitigation is in terms of how we maintain and improve our quality of life without dramatically affecting the cost of living. Technology is the key. But the carbon management technology stack today, by any measure, is immature. Ensuring this technology stack is mature and affordable needs to be our central thesis and goal. That’s why I've focused on cement and concrete decarbonization – with Nextli Technologies, CarbonBuilt and Concrete.AI – and carbon emissions mitigation and hydrogen production – Equatic. These efforts seek to impact and transform, affordably, the fundamental building blocks of civilization as we know it, thereby transforming the manufacturing base of these foundational sectors. If we can create positive action across these “building block sectors,” it ripples across all other parts – of the economy and the world – that we need to influence to decarbonize energy and industrial systems as we know them.

Trump’s science cuts have thrown the research world into chaos. Firing federal workers and freezing grants are upending the world-class system the U.S. has built since World War II (Bloomberg)

Climate group funded by Bill Gates slashes staff in major retreat. Breakthrough Energy, an umbrella group for energy and environmental efforts, is resetting for the Trump era (New York Times)

Geothermal energy could power nearly all new data centers by 2030. Planned additions could quadruple geothermal power capacity in the U.S.—from 4 gigawatts to about 16 gigawatts (TechCrunch)

NASA eliminates chief scientist position. The U.S. space agency is also cutting offices advising it on technology, strategy, and coordinating diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility efforts (Science)

Climate inaction could cut global GDP by a third this century. But investing less than 2% of GDP now could eliminate most of those losses, according to a report from Boston Consulting Group and the University of Cambridge (Forbes)

Membrane could herald more sustainable lithium extraction. Scientists have developed new membranes to extract lithium from salty lake water using electricity, an advance that could lead to more sustainable lithium extraction (The Engineer)