The government of the United States has a fundamental responsibility to exercise public authority to protect the American people, and people in other nations, from preventable harm caused by climate pollution. This duty is embodied in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, which commits the government to: 

establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

It is also embodied in the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, which provide for: 

• An irreducible right to legal redress; 
• The protection of all human rights, including those not written in law; 
• Equal protection for all people, without favor for powerful interests that might seek special permission to cause harm to others.

The International Court of Justice has just found that all governments have a legal duty to act to reduce climate risk and harm, to their own people and to people in other nations. That duty is rooted in specific treaties and other international agreements, but also in customary international law (which recognizes the legitimacy of nation states, as such) and in fundamental human rights, which are transcendent and irreducible. 

From 1980 to 1989, the U.S. spent roughly $220 billion on all natural disasters costing $1 billion or more, combined. Between mid-2024 and January 2025, the U.S. experienced two disasters—Hurricane Helene and the Los Angeles fires—that are each projected to cost $250 billion over time. More than 20% of the total cost of major disasters since 1980 has come in the last three years. This rate of cost increase is not sustainable.

During Donald Trump’s first term, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a report finding unchecked climate change would eventually collapse the financial system and destroy its ability to support the everyday economy. A year later, the Financial Stability Oversight Council issued a similar finding, tracing complex transmission channels and reporting on numerous cascading risks that will affect households, businesses, and the entire financial system.

While Congress is working to safeguard the National Weather Service and background Earth observation science that makes it possible, in the wake of the catastrophic loss of 137 lives in central Texas flooding, the Trump administration has announced it will end sharing of data from military meteorological satellites and move to cancel the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment Finding.

The Endangerment Finding is considered foundational to U.S. climate policy, including regulation of heat-trapping, climate disrupting emissions. It is not, however, a policy whim. The Endangerment Finding is a legally required action of the EPA to translate existing scientific evidence into policy appropriate to the agency’s mission. The EPA is required by law to protect the American people against harm caused by pollution or by human-caused breakdown in natural systems.

Without U.S. action to reduce climate pollution, the world will not succeed in preventing dangeorus climate disruption. The costs will be catastrophic, and the U.S. will bear an immense burden of cost and destabilization. Entire coastal economies, including major cities, will be irreversibly altered by the end of this century. Long before that happens, local, state, and federal government bodies will likely find it difficult, if not impossible, to manage the rising costs of compounding impacts.

Fiscal Resilience ratings will value diversification of data & opportunity

Already, food systems are under ever-increasing stress, with droughts and floods alternating to undermine harvests, food security, and farmer incomes. The Food System Economics Commission finds unsustainable practices, environmental and climate destruction, and waste, including health impacts, have cost more than $142 trillion, globally, since 2016. 

• Hunger is spreading around the world, disrupted by conflict and trade barriers, but also by the ongoing and worsening pressure of climate pattern destabilization and dislocation. 
• Food prices are still rising in the U.S., and climate disruption is making it harder for Mr. Trump, or any U.S. leader, to bring them down. 
• In food economies as diverse as the U.S. and Zambia, farmers complain of new diseases and crop pests, spread by climate disruption and ecological breakdown, making it harder to produce efficiently and effectively. 

One of the most powerful tools for climate action may be the Constitution of the United States. 

• The First Amendment guarantee that the right to redress will never be abridged, together with the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments, mean the courts can be called on to correct negligence or malfeasance both by government officials and by the private sector. 
• Regardless of the whims of Mr. Trump and his EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Americans will retain the right to pursue justice for harm knowingly caused through climate pollution.
• And, courts now have guidance not only from the Constitution and from U.S. judicial precedent and common law, but from the International Court of Justice.

Climate change is not theoretical; it is not an idea or a belief. It is happening right now, in every country and region, and it is already imposing massive damage, loss of life, and cost. The strain on public budgets is already enormous and rapidly worsening. Refusing to recognize climate disruption, ignoring or suppressing climate data, sabotaging attribution science, and removing legal protections for human and environemntal safety, cannot and do not exonerate any actor from climate risk and liability.

Eliminating climate data increases liability

The only way to avoid legal liability for industrial-scale climate pollution and the ensuing harm is to demonstrate recognition of the evidence, a good-faith, practical and effective effort to reduce harm, cost, and waste, and a competitive future climate resilience strategy. Sabotaging U.S. climate policy, science, production, and related private sector innovation, if successful, will cancel U.S. leadership in the global economy and undermine the nation’s fiscal and physical security. 

Whatever the EPA does in the coming weeks and months, the Congress and the all courts of law, at the federal and state levels, can recognize this reality, limit executive overreach, and help set motivational guidelines for a proactive future-oriented climate crisis response. The American people, and all human beings now and in the future, have rights that friends of polluters are simply not allowed to disregard.

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Written for Climate Civics, published Wed, July 30, 2025