EXPERTS ADVISORY

University of Michigan experts are available to comment on a potential repeal of the 2009 declaration that greenhouse gas emissions are harmful to human health—known as the endangerment finding.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly considering this action.

Andy Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, a position that holds joint appointments at the Ross School of Business and School for Environment and Sustainability.

“The EPA’s potential decision to rescind the endangerment finding on climate change would, in effect, be saying that climate change is not a threat. We can deny that threat, but the insurance industry most certainly is not, with increasing storm frequency and severity leading to rising property insurance rates, reduced coverage, increased deductibles, more exclusions and, at the extreme, complete withdrawal from certain markets.”

Contact: [email protected]

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Richard Rood is a professor emeritus of climate and space sciences and engineering. He can comment on the intersection of science and policy.

“All told, we see a strategy emerging that harkens back to ‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.’ That is, if you don’t measure it, then it cannot be managed or regulated.

“The role of science in regulation and policymaking has been understated in the current deconstruction of our science enterprise. The persistent and consistent efforts over many years to dismantle the infrastructure and institutions for climate regulation show that this is more than the actions of a single administration.”

Contact: [email protected]

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Ann Jeffers is an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering whose research focuses on fire safety engineering and how structures react to extreme load events such as wildfires.

“Removing restrictions on carbon emissions will only exacerbate climate-related disasters. If you think America has a wildfire problem now, just wait.

“Carbon emissions are known to be the leading cause of climate change, which has produced a hotter, drier climate in North America. This, in turn, has resulted in more frequent and more intense wildfires than we have previously seen, resulting in catastrophic events like the Los Angeles fires earlier this year, which resulted in thousands of structures burned and billions of dollars in losses.”

Contact: [email protected]

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Liesl Eichler Clark of the School for Environment and Sustainability is U-M’s first director of climate action engagement. She leads a new initiative aimed at linking the university’s expanding sustainability research, collaborations and engagement with external partners to accelerate climate action across the state of Michigan and beyond.

“Americans are suffering on a daily basis from our changing climate—from devastating floods to hurricanes to the now-commonplace challenge of wildfires—to name just a few of the harms. Climate change is causing loss of human life and property and harming human health.

“Michigan is making progress on limiting our CO2 emissions in a cost-effective way that makes life better for Michiganders, led by the MI Healthy Climate Plan roadmap, relying on clean energy solutions that are often cheaper and easier to use. Clean energy jobs in Michigan continue to grow and our clean economy expands. We will continue to lead.”

Contact: [email protected]

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Alexander Rodriguez is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering who develops machine-learning and deep-learning models to better predict heat-related deaths. He can comment on the harms from heatwaves and how heatwave forecasting may need to change in the future.

“Heatwaves are a major contributor to deaths in urban areas. For example, extreme heat killed over 2,000 people across 12 major European cities this June and July, and another European heatwave resulted in over 40,000 deaths in 2003. Several studies suggest that we are heading toward a future in which heatwaves will become more frequent and severe, and the move to rescind the EPA’s endangerment finding indicates that there will be less efforts to alleviate those trends.

“It is evident that we will need more forecasting systems, and significant improvements to them. Current methods focus primarily on meteorological data, but we can better predict the danger of heat waves by incorporating a range of other social and environmental factors that can make them lethal.”

Contact: [email protected]

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Nina Mendelson is the Joseph L. Sax Collegiate Professor of Law. She teaches and conducts research in the areas of administrative law, environmental law, statutory interpretation and the legislative process.

“An EPA move now to repeal its 2009 endangerment finding both could be devastating to our efforts to address climate change and would face immediate court challenges. A repeal would be vulnerable in the courts on both factual and legal grounds, because the evidence on climate change has strengthened since 2009, and because the EPA would have to provide the courts with some very good reasons for disagreeing now with a decision that has been in place for over 15 years.”

Contact: [email protected] 

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Rachel Rothschild is an assistant professor of law. Before joining the Michigan Law faculty, she was a legal fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, where she remains an affiliated scholar. Her scholarship sits at the intersection of environmental law, history and policy.

“An EPA repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding would be at odds with Supreme Court precedent, as well as scientific research on the harms from climate change. While EPA will almost certainly face a legal challenge over such an attempt, that litigation will take time at a moment when we have little runway left to avoid extremely serious effects from a warming world. 

“In the absence of federal government regulations, it will be even more important for states to continue making progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, promoting clean energy, and ensuring fossil fuel companies pay their fair share of the costs for climate adaptation.”

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Parth Vaishnav is an assistant professor of sustainable systems at the School for Environment and Sustainability. His research is focused on environmental and human health consequences of energy production and use and his team works to find strategies to decarbonize the economy, and to make climate mitigation and adaptation equitable.

“Climate change poses a risk to human health and is caused primarily by the emissions of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is carbon dioxide. The Clean Air Acts were promulgated to control air pollution that poses risks to human health. So, it seems logical that the endangerment finding should stand.”

Contact: [email protected] 

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Gregory Keoleian is a professor of environment and sustainability and civil and environmental engineering, and co-founder/co-director of the Center for Sustainable Systems, as well as co-director of MI Hydrogen, U-M’s hydrogen initiative. He develops life cycle models to analyze decarbonization pathways and accelerate sustainability solutions for clean energy transitions, alternative vehicle technologies, buildings and infrastructure, and food systems. He can speak to the administration’s actions that slow and reverse climate and sustainability progress in automotive, energy and more.

“Denying the science would be reckless and irresponsible. In 2009, the EPA issued its science-based finding that the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare. The endangerment finding requires the EPA to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated from vehicles, power plants, and other industrial sources.  

“The administration’s proposed action would hurt U.S. economic competitiveness, take away clean energy jobs, reverse decarbonization progress and will ultimately result in greater climate change related damages and costs to society—for example, from flooding, wildfires, droughts, insurance risks, human health effects. Nobody wins.”

Contact: [email protected] 

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Jonathan Overpeck, an interdisciplinary climate scientist and dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability, is an expert on climate and weather extremes, sea-level rise, the impacts of climate change and options for dealing with it. He served as a lead author on the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 and 2014 reports.

“I worked with a team of fellow climate scientists who weighed in as experts on the original endangerment finding almost 20 years ago to publish a new paper this year highlighting that the scientific evidence has only become much stronger that climate change is endangering human health and welfare—and much more.

“Climate change and its impacts are accelerating and are impacting lives and livelihoods in the U.S. more than ever. Climate change is supercharging extreme heat, drought, wildfires, extreme rainfall, flooding, sea level rise and challenges to human health in the U.S. and around the globe.”

Contact: [email protected] 

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Catherine Hausman is an associate professor at the Ford School of Public Policy and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research. Her work focuses on environmental and energy economics.  

“Climate change endangers the economy, human health and the well-being of Americans. Decades of research—thousands of studies by objective researchers—have quantified the ways that climate change threatens agricultural production, labor productivity, children’s ability to learn and our nation’s infrastructure.” 

“We see climate change’s effects directly every year, in the form of wildfires, floods and hurricanes. Denying that greenhouse gases endanger our nation’s well-being is a farce. 

Contact: [email protected]