Miami, FL — The CLEO Institute strongly opposes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s misguided proposal to eliminate the Endangerment Finding. Published in 2009 after a decade of scientific and legal review, the finding states that greenhouse gas emissions (climate warming pollution) from human activities are a threat to the wellbeing of current and future generations.

When the EPA published this finding, it was doing its job: protecting human health and the environment.

In the 16 years since, the threats to human health and wellbeing from climate pollution have become more apparent and more painful. The floods in Texas, which claimed the lives of dozens, many of them children, are not just extreme weather. They are a warning. A hotter atmosphere holds more moisture. Warmer oceans fuel more evaporation. The result is a broken water cycle that dumps rain in devastating bursts, flooding neighborhoods, displacing families, and taking lives.

It is tragically, abundantly clear, that the EPA’s proposal to repeal the endangerment finding does not put the health of the American public at the forefront. Instead, it prioritizes the wealth of gas and oil companies.

“They’re trying to make pollution legal again,” says Yoca Arditi-Rocha, CEO of The CLEO Institute. “While the rest of the world is racing to dominate the clean energy economy, the U.S. is tying itself to yesterday’s energy sources. This repeal weakens our competitiveness, threatens job creation, and ignores the biggest economic opportunity of our time.”

The Environmental Protection Agency cannot claim to “protect people and the environment” while denying the science that keeps them safe. Instead, they are showing us what caving to special interests looks like. This is a disservice to the American people, especially those the agency is sworn to protect.

We call on the Environmental Protection Agency to do its job. It’s literally in their name.