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For Trump, corporate profits are more important than American lives 

Two centuries ago, the Industrial Revolution promised unprecedented prosperity for the American people. And it delivered, but it involved a Faustian bargain.

We accepted pollution as the price for economic growth. The fossil fuels that powered the Industrial Revolution have imposed enormous costs on people and the planet. Now, the same fuels undermine prosperity, and the costs of the bargain have grown too large.  

By the middle of the 20th century, pollution had become an obvious problem. Congress began passing laws to limit it. In the 1970s, Congress passed several landmark statutes. One created the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating pollution. It also obligated federal agencies to assess the ecological and human impacts of their actions. Those impacts include the contamination of drinking water, destruction of ecosystems, and air pollution by a variety of toxic substances that harm unborn babies, children and adults.  

In effect, EPA became the arbiter of the Faustian bargain, deciding how many deaths, diseases, and ruined ecosystems are acceptable collateral damage from power plants, vehicles, factories and petrochemicals.  

By the 1990s, scientists were growing increasingly alarmed that a group of fossil-fuel pollutants called greenhouse gases was altering the Earth’s climate. Republicans and Democrats in Congress agreed to address this at first. But with trillions of dollars of oil and gas reserves still underground, oil companies enlisted Republicans in a campaign to discredit climate science and oppose ways to mitigate global warming. That campaign continues today. 

Now, more than 50 years later, the costs of fossil fuels remain severe. So, when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House in 2022, they approved hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy funding, the largest federal investment ever.   

Then came President Trump and the Republican takeover of Congress. Trump denies that climate change is real. He is increasing America’s oil production while canceling the clean energy projects that Congress funded. His energy policies completely disregard the American people’s wishes. Nearly three in four adults now agree that burning fossil fuels contributes to climate change, and 64 percent say that climate change is affecting their communities. 

Last year, Trump’s cancellation of clean energy projects cost the nation more than 38,000 manufacturing jobs and $30 billion in manufacturing investments. Extreme weather costs the economy about $150 billion annually. Climate change is expected to cost 30 of America’s biggest companies $6 billion annually in the years ahead, according to First Street, a New York consultancy.

Thousands of peer-reviewed studies and actual experience confirm the enormous health impacts of energy pollution and climate change. Trump calls them a “scam.”

However, nearly half of us live where breathing causes cancers and other deadly diseases. Air pollution results in about 200,000 premature deaths each year. Nearly 5 million children suffer from asthma. Hundreds of them die from it.

Climate change also damages mental health. Medical experts report that most young Americans (age 16 to 24) are experiencing disappointment, frustration, sadness, anxiety and anger over America’s failure to abate global warming.  

The least of us are hurt most. Some 256,000 Americans, mostly low-income families, live in “sacrifice zones” where oil, gas, chemical and other toxic industries are clustered. Trump’s energy policies sacrifice their health and welfare for others’ economic gain.  

Meanwhile, hazard insurance premiums – necessary to obtain home mortgages – have gone up 70 percent over the past five years. One study predicts that an American born in 2024 will pay about $500,000 in lifetime costs due to climate change. 

Even though electricity generated by wind and solar technologies is less expensive than that from fossil or nuclear fuels, 80 percent of the nation’s energy still comes from fossil fuels. The average household saw its electric bills rise 5 percent last year; they’re expected to go up another 4.2 percent this year. 

All these consequences are about to get worse.  

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has undertaken what he calls the “single largest deregulatory action” in history. He says the agency will stop quantifying the health and ecological benefits of regulations, and will only consider what pollution limits cost industry. In other words, the administration will put profit over people.

In addition, the EPA has repealed the legal foundation of pollution limits — its obvious finding in 2009 that climate change endangers human health and welfare. Zeldin says this will save Americans over $1.3 trillion by 2055, yet the agency also estimates that the repeal will cost Americans $1.5 trillion, even without counting climate and health impacts.   

We must begin speaking the truth about fossil fuels. Their dominance results from longstanding collusion between government and Big Oil. The government keeps fossil-energy prices artificially low with billions of dollars in annual taxpayer subsidies and by allowing the market to hide the fuels’ actual costs to society and the environment. The most recent estimate of these hidden costs was $754 billion in 2022, when pollution was still regulated.  

Fossil fuels now undermine prosperity. They kill countless Americans. They make millions ill. Needless childhood asthma is child abuse. Their dominance is perpetuated by a racketeering carbon cartel that consists of Big Oil, Trump and Congress. The International Court of Justice calls this an “internationally wrongful act.” But because it will hurt generations for centuries to come, it is also a crime against the future and humanity. It must end. 

William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director who administered energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies programs. He also served as special assistant to the department’s assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy. Becker is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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