AP Estimates Death Toll Linked To Trump’s EPA Rollbacks

(WPXI) – The Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump is aiming to undo or revise more than 30 major environmental regulations, many of them written or updated by the Biden administration. These include rules for cleaner vehicles, power plant emissions, and limits on tiny airborne particles known to harm human health. The Associated Press set out to examine what might happen if all the rules were eliminated. The AP also drew from studies published in the journals Science and Nature Communications and emissions estimates from the independent and nonpartisan Rhodium Group in order to calculate the possible annual death toll. The estimate of global deaths includes estimates of heat deaths from added carbon emissions, using a peer-reviewed formula developed by Daniel Bressler, a former White House climate economist during the Biden administration. It estimates one person will die for every 10,217 tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. The Rhodium Group estimates that the Trump administration’s rollbacks would lead to 2.8 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2035 translating to, on average, more than 25,000 deaths each year.