PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • February 19, 2026
Last week’s decision by the Environmental Protection Agency repealing a 2009 “endangerment” finding that carbon dioxide emissions threaten the national and global environment was regrettable, potentially tragic — and predictable. Corporate lobbyists, and now a solid phalanx of Republican lawmakers, have been battling against environmental laws and rules since 1970, when the original Clean Air Act written by Maine Sen. Ed Muskie was signed into law by President Richard Nixon — the same year Nixon created the EPA. Sen. George Mitchell, Muskie’s successor, pushed through the Clean Air Act of 1990 against daunting odds and held the first Senate hearings on global warming. All through the 1990s and 2000s, scientific evidence mounted that we were conducting the largest chemistry experiment on the atmosphere in humanity’s brief history, and that disasters were the certain outcome. When Barack Obama became president, the EPA acted with its “endangerment” finding through rule-making. Then Trump was elected again, bent on pursuing a radical anti-environment agenda. Our children and grandchildren will not thank us if they encounter what George Mitchell foresaw as a “world on fire.” ~ Douglas Rooks