ABC News repeatedly botched the science of a major regulation “to fight climate change” while falsely accusing President Trump of “rejecting” and “wiping out” “science.”
SOURCES:
The full ABC World News Tonight with David Muir broadcast on the EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding for greenhouse gases is available here.
The EPA’s technical support document for the repealed regulation states that it concerns “greenhouse gas emissions” and that the “dominant gas emitted is CO2, mostly from fossil fuel combustion.”
Per the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory, CO2 is a “clear gas” that “occurs naturally” in the “Earth’s atmosphere,” is “part of the air that humans breathe,” is “essential to plant life,” and is “stable, inert, and non-toxic” at “standard temperature and pressure conditions.”
Per the Cambridge University Press textbook Understanding Environmental Pollution, CO2 is “vital to life” and “almost all biochemicals found within living creatures derive directly or indirectly from atmospheric CO2.”
Per a scholarly paper on the human physiology of CO2, “Carbon dioxide production occurs in cells, mainly during the citric acid cycle in the cytoplasm and mitochondria, respectively.”
Per the MIT Press Dictionary of Environment and Development, “carbon dioxide contributes more than any other [manmade] gas to the greenhouse effect….”
Per the academic book “Carbon Dioxide Capture for Storage in Deep Geologic Formations,” CO2 is “generally regarded as a safe and non-toxic, inert gas. It is an essential part of the fundamental biological processes of all living things. It does not cause cancer, affect development or suppress the immune system in humans.”
Natural processes emit about 770 billion metric tons of CO2 per year, while human activities emit about 41 billion.
The EPA’s technical support document for the regulation repealed by Trump states, “Current ambient air concentrations of CO2 and other GHGs remain well below published exposure thresholds for any direct adverse health effects, such as respiratory or toxic effects.”
The EPA explicitly states that the repealed regulation applies to “greenhouse gases” and “does not affect regulations that combat criteria pollutants and air toxics.”
When Trump repealed the regulation, the New York Times ran a headline at the top of its home page on 2/18/26 at 9:15 AM EST that read, “With Latest Rollback, the U.S. Essentially Has No Clean-Car Rules.”
The Associated Press, Politico, NBC News, CNN, NPR, Bloomberg News, and other media outlets have misportrayed CO2 as a dirty, noxious pollutant.
Per the Cambridge University Press textbook “Understanding Environmental Pollution,” “Anything is toxic at a high enough dose. … Even water, drunk in very large quantities, may kill people by disrupting the osmotic balance in the body’s cells.”
Per a paper about “Oxygen Toxicity” in the “American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine,” “Numerous studies in laboratory animals demonstrated that exposure to an FIO2 greater than 0.7 over 3–6 days can cause death from progressive respiratory failure (4, 5).”
CO2 can be dangerous at high doses, but it causes no adverse cardio-pulmonary effects or discomfort in humans until concentrations exceed 48 times the level in Earth’s atmosphere.
CO2 is a desired output of catalytic converters, which the EPA describes as an “anti-pollution device” that converts “exhaust pollutants such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides to normal atmospheric gases such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water.”
Cornell University grad Bill Maher claimed in 2026 that “CO2” is “carbon” and a “pollutant” that will kill you if you “go in the garage, close the door,” and “turn the car on.”
Per the “New England Journal of Medicine,” “Carbon monoxide intoxication continues to be one of the most common causes of morbidity due to poisoning in the United States, and the “carbon monoxide in motor vehicle exhaust fumes accounts for the majority of deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning.”
CO2 is not carbon, just like water, or H2O, is not hydrogen.
Footage from ABC News is reproduced under the fair use provision of U.S. copyright law for “purposes such as criticism” and “comment” (17 U.S.C. §107).
James D. Agresti is the president of Just Facts, a research institute dedicated to publishing rigorously documented facts about public policies and teaching research skills.
