Rivers: Donald Trump is the President of Pollution

By Ray Rivers

February 15th, 2026

BURLINGTON, ON

US president Donald Trump doesn’t believe in global warming and calls it a hoax.  He obviously believes that his intuition is more powerful than all the scientific evidence and meteorologic data generated by thousands of scientists around the globe who make a living studying this stuff.  So he has just killed the ‘Endangerment Finding’, the legislative requirement enabling the USEPA to regulate climate changing emissions.

Perhaps it is just a defensive pose.  Greenhouse gases are long-lived in the atmosphere and that makes America the nation most responsible for global warming.   It has been the greatest historical emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs) on the planet – accounting for approximately 20% to 25% of all cumulative global emissions since 1751.   And US carbon emissions are once again increasing after a decade of decline.

World’s Biggest Solar Farm Goes Live in China

China is currently the bad guy when it comes to annual greenhouse emissions but that may be changing.  Both China and India have invested heavily in solar and wind power.   And, for the first time since the 1970’s both nations have reduced their coal usage.  That stands in contrast to Mr. Trump who is actually demanding more coal burning in America.  And coal is only one of the two major sources of carbon emissions in America.

The other major source is the internal combustion engine (ICE), or as we know it the motor car.  As far back as 1943, smog from industrial and auto pollution was so bad in Los Angeles that people couldn’t see to drive their cars – in fact they kept crashing into each other.   And because the US was at war with Japan everyone imagined that this was a poison gas attack by their enemy.  But it was really a self inflicted injury caused by their internal enemy – US made tail pipe and industrial emissions.

Research is now showing that smog is also a precursor for dementia and Alzheimer’s outcomes.

President Richard Nixon ushered in the Clean Air Act to clean up America’s smog filled cities.  But even before him, another Republican,  California governor Ronald Reagan established the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to fight severe Los Angeles smog and enable the state to set strict, trailblazing, emission standards in 1967.

California also led the world on phasing out toxic lead from gasoline as early as 1976.  And it led the nation by requiring tight fuel efficiency standards, and ultimately low carbon fuel efficiency standards.  And more recently by introducing an Electric Vehicle (EV) mandate, the phase out of new gas guzzlers by 2035, much like what Canada and Europe had introduced.   Mr. Trump’s Congress last year not only killed the EV mandate but also weakened federal tailpipe standards, including those for heavy duty trucks.

The result of these actions will be a return to ever increasing air pollution for American cities.  The US may not have the dirtiest air in the world but American cities trail the rest of the world when it comes to clean air.   We have long known that dirty air is associated with any number of human health outcomes, from asthma to lung cancer, heart disease and, of course, death.

More recently researchers have concluded that smog is also a precursor for dementia and Alzheimer’s outcomes.  They found that “PM2.5, a particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less, could increase the risk of dementia by 17%.  It was small enough to be inhaled deep into the lungs and came from sources including vehicle emissions, power plants, wood burning and construction dust.”

Mr. Trump is a champion for the application of tariffs, though mostly his appear to be politically motivated or indiscriminate.  Back in the 1990’s when America was a leading force on climate and pollution, it had developed a tariff regime which it planned to apply to those nations out of compliance with the Kyoto Protocol.  Such a mechanism would have levelled the competitive economic field.

The Kyoto Protocol has 192 parties (191 states and the European Union) that ratified the agreement, making them legally bound to its targets.

That proposal died when GW Bush took America out of that climate change agreement, though others, including Canada for a short time, and Europe, continued to observe the Kyoto agreement.  And Europe has developed a tariff regime along the lines once proposed by the Americans.

One can only hope that the EU has the resolve to slap tariffs, as appropriate, on all dirty imports, and especially those from Trump’s America.  One can only hope that Canada does the same.

Ray Rivers, a Gazette Contributing Editor, writes regularly applying his more than 25 years as a federal bureaucrat to his thinking.  Rivers was once a candidate for provincial office in Burlington.  He was the founder of the Burlington citizen committee on sustainability at a time when climate warming was a hotly debated subject.   Ray has a post graduate degree in economics that he earned at the University of Ottawa.  Tweet @rayzrivers

BACKGROUND LINKS:

Endangerment Finding –     Killer Smog –       California’s Fight on Pollution

Trump Loves Coal – India/China Coal –      Dementia and Pollution –   Environmental Tariffs –