How the repeal of EPA’s crisis measures will affect your wallet

The Trump administration has dismantled a key defense in the United States’ fight against climate change, but experts on the economic impact of global warming say it will likely have far-reaching implications for public finances.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday reversed a “crisis finding” that had been the cornerstone of U.S. climate policy since the Obama administration.

The discovery supports the federal government’s legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, which trap heat in the atmosphere and warm the planet.

Experts say the changes are the Trump administration’s most aggressive steps yet to impede U.S. climate change policy.

Chris Field, director of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, said at a September briefing that reversing the endangered status designation would leave the United States with fewer tools to curb emissions and increase Americans’ exposure to climate damage.

President Donald Trump has called climate change a “con artist” and a “hoax.” But scientists almost unanimously agree that climate change is real and caused primarily by humans through greenhouse gas emissions.

Experts say a warming climate will make extreme weather events and events such as wildfires, floods, droughts and hurricanes more intense.

These can have a significant financial impact on households, experts say, including increased costs for insurance, relocation, home repairs, medical care, food and electricity to heat and cool homes. There is also the possibility that wages will be reduced due to worker absenteeism.

Weather-related disasters already cost the United States nearly $150 billion annually, and climate change is expected to increase that amount in the short term, according to the U.S. government’s latest National Climate Assessment, due in 2023.

“There’s no escaping the basic physics of climate change,” says Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who co-leads the left-wing think tank Climate and Community Practice.

He said the reversal of the endangered study would likely worsen the effects of climate change in the long term.

“This is a huge deal,” Rumbak said. “It’s going to have a huge impact” on people’s finances, he said.

EPA’s finding of hazards stems from a 2007 Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA.

In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases fall under the category of air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The justices directed the EPA, which is responsible for setting limits for harmful pollutants, to determine whether greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health or welfare.

In December 2009, the Obama administration released a so-called endangered study finding that six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, in the atmosphere threaten the public health and well-being of current and future generations.

Since then, the EPA has regulated emissions from automobiles, other vehicles, and power plants. If repealed on Thursday, it would pave the way for challenges to those regulations.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement Thursday that the repeal is “the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

The federal agency estimates that the measure will save Americans more than $1.3 trillion by eliminating the endangered certification and “all subsequent federal greenhouse gas emissions standards for all vehicle and engine model years 2012 through 2027 and beyond.”

The EPA says the average person can save about $2,400 per vehicle. This estimate includes cost avoidance associated with purchasing equipment for electric vehicles.

Transportation is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for about 28% of the nation’s emissions in 2022, according to the latest data from the EPA.

These emissions primarily come from the combustion of fossil fuels (such as oil and gasoline) in cars, trucks, ships, trains, and airplanes.

“Calling CO2 a pollutant and doing something about it is good for the climate,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School.

If no extinction is detected, “emissions will increase, which means more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which means more intense wildfires, more storms, and so on,” he said. “That’s bad for the rest of us.”

“The big question here is: What are the chances that this will hold up in court?” he said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, climate change is causing an increase in weather and climate disasters in the United States, and the costs of these disasters are increasing over time.

According to NOAA data released in 2025, from 1980 to 2023, there were nine disasters each year in the United States, each causing more than $1 billion in damages. However, the frequency of costly disasters increased to an average of 23 per year over the five-year period from 2020 to 2024, NOAA found.

A study conducted in the same year by the consulting firm ICF found that Americans born in 2024 can expect to pay about $500,000 over their lifetime due to the economic impacts of climate change.

For example, climate change will increase the risk of property damage from floods and wildfires throughout the 21st century, the Congressional Budget Office said in a 2024 report.

“Property owners, mortgage lenders, insurance companies and the federal government will bear the burden of losses from floods and wildfires,” the CBO said. “If these losses lead to a chain reaction of failures of financial institutions, the financial system will be weakened.

Experts say home insurance companies are raising premiums beyond the reach of many consumers, and some are abandoning certain markets altogether.

For example, in hurricane-prone state Florida, average annual homeowners insurance premiums are nearly $6,000, more than double the national average, according to a 2024 report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. According to the report, homeowners insurance premiums nationwide will rise 40% from 2017 to 2022, faster than inflation, with climate risks being the main culprit.

Experts say extreme weather can also affect household cash flow due to lost working days.

A 2022 study by economists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Oregon found that wildfire smoke, for example, reduces incomes for workers in manufacturing, agricultural production, public works, health care, real estate, government, transportation, and other sectors.

Economists say that between 2007 and 2019, workers withdrew an average of $125 billion a year in income.

Among other impacts, rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could mean “increased asthma and heart disease associated with poorer air quality, higher food prices from climate-stressed crops, and economic losses as U.S. companies fall behind in global clean technology markets,” Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment said in a commentary on the endangerment study.

In the short term, the Urban Institute’s Rumbach said, the reversal of endangered status could result in lower efficiency standards for cars. He said that as long as automakers can produce cheaper cars, consumers could potentially save money on car purchases.

But consumers are likely to pass on those savings over the life of the car compared to more efficient vehicles like electric cars, Rumbach said. Researchers found that some consumers save money over the long term with EVs compared to traditional gasoline cars, due to lower fuel and maintenance costs, among other reasons.