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The Trump administration recently repealed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 endangerment finding—the scientific and legal determination that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare that has anchored federal climate regulation for nearly two decades. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin called the finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.” Within weeks, a coalition of more than 20 states filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reverse the repeal. The legal battle that follows will help define American environmental policy for a generation. Brigham Daniels and I did not plan the timing of our new book, Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law, to coincide with this particular legal conflict. But we could not have chosen a more clarifying moment for its release. The endangerment finding repeal is not an aberration—it is a recognizable recurrence in a history that stretches back centuries. Law has always been the primary engine of both environmental exploitation and protection in the United States.

On April 24, The Washington Postpublished an op-ed that sought to blame an unusual source for the high energy and gas prices Americans are now facing: justice. Specifically, it claims that these price increases are the result of state and local governments trying to hold Big Oil accountable for the climate-related harms their constituents are continuing to suffer. I submitted a letter to the editor debunking the op-ed’s argument, noting that the real cause of higher gas prices is the illegal war in Iran.

As the release date of my forthcoming book, Unlearn Power: Strengthening Communities in the Age of Environmental Crisis, approaches, naturally, I've been asked, "What's the book about?" But given the amalgamation of ecological devastation across the planet, with fallout and stakes unevenly felt across socioeconomic lines and underscored by political forces that engage in climate denialism and assaults on democratic institutions, I urge that "Why Unlearn Power?" is the more apropos question.

The 56th Earth Day may also be the bleakest. Wave upon wave is crashing upon our system of ecological protections. But having spent years studying the full sweep of American environmental legal history, we can say with confidence: the bigger the wave, the stronger the undercurrent.

In early April, The Washington Post published an op-ed trashing state and local efforts to hold Big Oil and Gas accountable under the law for the lies they told about their products’ connections to climate change and damages they inflict on people and the planet. I submitted a letter to the editor presenting counterpoints to the op-ed’s claims, which included the absurd notion that insulating some of the biggest companies on earth from even a small measure of justice is somehow a vital “national security” interest. The Post chose not to run that letter, so I’m sharing it with readers here.

This Earth Day, environmental advocates are looking backward as well as forward. With the U.S. federal government so dramatically overhauling environmental policy, history shows how American social movements of the 19th and 20th centuries overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to preserve public lands and pass laws protecting human health. “I’ve been trying to look through the history of the United States to understand how we’ve gotten where we are,” said Alejandro Camacho, a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and co-author of Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of U.S. Environmental Law, which comes out on Earth Day, April 22, 2026. “Prior generations did meet the moment and at least partially addressed some of the major problems that were in front of them.” Camacho discusses the book in this lightly edited transcript.

In 2025, North Carolina saw an effective repeal of its carbon plan, and the state is now on track to approve over 100 data center projects. This will further imperil the state’s 2050 decarbonization goal while creating a new slew of environmental and public health concerns and electricity affordability problems. The state is charting a harmful path and should change course before its policies hurt more people and communities.

A fan of place-based education, every year I haul my students to Louisiana’s Maurepas Wildlife Management Area to paddle the swamps and learn about coastal law. This semester, I had ten students with me, each paddling a kayak on the swamp’s shimmering water. Bits of salvinia, a free-floating aquatic fern, eased downstream at an almost imperceptible rate. Stories on the bayou are always changing. This year, the narrative wrestled with a choice the state is making about what the Maurepas Swamp will become — an ecological jewel or a carbon-capture dump. The community is torn.

If the Trump EPA successfully repeals the endangerment findings for vehicles and stationary sources, states will be the only resort for climate action. A key question is how the repeals would impact state power relating to carbon emissions. The bottom line answers are: (1) the impact on state power to regulate tailpipe emissions seems unclear but could be positive; (2) there would be no effect on state power to regulate stationary sources like power plants; (3) plaintiffs suing oil companies would probably benefit.