Brandeis Stories

By David Levin
March 31, 2026 • Research

Prakesh Kashwan is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Brandeis University, and Chair of the Environmental Justice concentration in the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management.

In February 2026, the Trump administration overturned the EPA’s “endangerment finding", a legal cornerstone of federal climate regulation. The decision was easy to miss, but its consequences won’t be. Prakash Kashwan, a Brandeis University professor who studies the social impacts of environmental and climate change, says its fallout will be felt by all of us: rising insurance rates, higher costs for food and fuel, and more intense natural disasters that many communities can't afford. We asked Kashwan to explain what just happened, and what comes next. 

What exactly is the "endangerment finding," and why does it matter?

It's essentially the legal foundation for all federal climate regulation in the United States. We don't have a dedicated climate law — so going back to the Obama administration, the Clean Air Act became the vehicle for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. The endangerment finding, issued by the EPA in 2009, was what made that possible: it established, following a 2007 Supreme Court directive, that greenhouse gases directly threaten human health and well-being. That single determination is what allows the federal government to regulate tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks — which account for well over 25 percent of all U.S. emissions. Scrap the finding, and that entire regulatory framework goes with it.

Can the administration just do that? Didn't the Supreme Court already weigh in?

It's complicated. The Supreme Court did rule in 2007 that the EPA had the authority — and really the obligation — to regulate greenhouse gases if it found them to be a health threat. But in 2024, the Court also gutted the Chevron doctrine, which had long required judges to defer to federal agencies' technical expertise. That decision significantly weakened the EPA's ability to act on its own authority. So you have these two forces working in the same direction: a president dismantling the regulatory machinery from the inside, and a Supreme Court that has already made it harder to defend.

What's the real-world fallout for ordinary Americans?

More than most people realize. The most immediate impact is that transport emissions — from cars, trucks, everything that moves — lose federal oversight. But zoom out to the broader implications for addressing the climate crisis, and the picture gets worse. Rising insurance rates, higher food prices, more frequent extreme heat events: these are already happening, and they disproportionately hit people who are living paycheck to paycheck. When a hurricane hits, wealthy people can leave. They can absorb the loss. The people who can't are the ones who end up most exposed. I'd argue that roughly 70 percent of Americans will feel the effects through energy and food prices alone — not just the poorest, but a very large share of the middle class too.

You study the social dimensions of climate change. What does this decision mean from that angle?

It's important to understand that the costs and benefits here are wildly unequal. The benefits of fossil fuel production flow to a very small number of people — mostly wealthy corporations and their shareholders. The costs are distributed across millions of people who had no say in the matter: low-income communities, communities of color, indigenous people, the elderly. What the repeal of the endangerment finding does, practically, is send a green light to polluters. It says: come in, the regulatory door is open. We're already seeing it — there are international oil companies setting up operations in Texas right now, specifically because of the regulatory vacuum.

Is there any path back from the Trump administration's decision?

Well, states can do a lot. New York and Vermont have passed climate "superfund" laws that could force fossil fuel companies to pay for climate-related damages — and ironically, the federal retreat may actually strengthen those laws, since one argument against them was federal preemption. States can also continue pushing building decarbonization and renewable energy within their borders. But the federal government, when it decides to be hostile, can make all of that much harder. The honest answer is: yes, a future administration could reverse much of this. But the longer this goes on, the more is locked in — legally, economically, and in the atmosphere itself.