Promethean Science - Trump Kills the CO2 Pollution Myth — Here's the Real Science

Related videos cited at the end:
• "Will Trump’s Fusion Push End the Malthusians?"
• "The Universal Law Underlying Trump's Energy Policy"

Trump just reversed one of the most expensive regulations in American history — and almost no one's covering it right. On February 12, President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin rescinded the 2009 EPA Endangerment Finding — the Obama-era ruling that classified CO2 as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. No new legislation. No vote. Just a bureaucratic decision that quietly unleashed trillions of dollars in regulatory costs, harmed the auto industry, and pushed electric vehicle mandates on the American people. Benjamin Deniston of Promethean Action breaks down what this finding actually was, where it came from, and why scrapping it matters. CO2 isn't lead. It's a naturally occurring gas that drives plant life, boosts crop yields, and is greening the planet. The science being used to justify climate regulation is weaker than you're being told — and the ideology behind it goes deeper than you think, tracing back to a 1975 Margaret Mead conference, Paul Ehrlich, and a long tradition of Malthusian population control dressed up as environmentalism.

00:00 Trump & EPA Move to Rescind the CO2 “Endangerment Finding”
01:13 How the 2009 Obama EPA Ruling Fueled Trillion-Dollar Regulations
03:30 Why CO2 Isn’t Like Smog: Clean Air Act vs. Greenhouse Gases
04:33 The Real Agenda? From Climate “Science” to Ideology
04:40 1975 ‘Atmosphere Endangered’ Conference: Manufacturing Consensus & Fear
06:27 Malthusian Roots: Population Control, Eugenics, and Environmentalism
08:11 CO2 Benefits the Biosphere: Fertilization, Crops, and Global Greening
09:44 Power per Mass: A Metric for Progress—and a Positive Human Impact
10:35 Dominion & Stewardship: A Different Framework Than Malthusianism
11:39 Wrap-Up: CO2, Natural Law, and What to Watch Next

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LINKS & REFERENCES

"President Trump Makes an Announcement with the Administrator of the EPA": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnkR8MbPKaE

Governor Gavin Newsom response: https://x.com/CAgovernor/status/2023489245797904852

"The Atmosphere: Endangered and Endangering" (1975 conference proceedings): https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.132143

Spencer, Roy. "Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models." Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/environment/report/global-warming-observations-vs-climate-models

McKitrick, R. and Christy, J. "Pervasive Warming Bias in CMIP6 Tropospheric Layers." AGU Geophysical Research Letters, 2020. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020EA001281

Scafetta, Nicola. "CMIP6 GCM ensemble members versus global surface temperatures." arXiv, 2022. https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.11414

Pielke, Roger Jr. "What Climate Science Actually Says About Extreme Weather." Watts Up With That, November 16, 2025. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/11/16/what-climate-science-actually-says-about-extreme-weather/

CO2 Coalition. "Nutritive Value of Plants Growing in Enhanced CO2 Concentrations." April 2024. https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Nutritive-Value-of-Plants-Growing-in-Enhanced-CO2-Concentrations-digital-2024-05-09.pdf

CO2 Coalition. "Carbon Dioxide Benefits the World." https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Carbon-Dioxide-Benefits-the-World.pdf

Hoehler, T., et al. "The metabolic rate of the biosphere and its components." PNAS, Vol. 120, No. 25, June 12, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2303764120

Deniston, Benjamin. "What Is Promethean Man? — In Defense of Science from Corruption." Promethean Action. https://www.prometheanaction.com/what-is-promethean-man-in-defense-of-science-from-corruption/

Transcript: Promethean Science - Trump Kills the CO2 Pollution Myth — Here's the Real Science

[00:00:00] We just saw the biggest counter attack against the climate change cult in years. President Trump and EPA administrator Zeldin have announced they're rescinding the claim that CO2 is a pollutant, and if you listen closely, the trees are celebrating.

The reaction from elites is exactly what you'd expect. California Governor Newsom declared, "I refuse to sit back and watch the climate crisis destroy our planet." "Destroy our planet?" That's not science. That's mindless adherence to a climate cult that follows ideology, first, and cherry picks science, second. Did you know there are immense benefits to higher CO2 levels? You'll rarely hear about that in the mainstream media.

I'm Benjamin Deniston with Promethean Action, and I've been investigating the corrupted ideology behind the climate change cult for well over a decade, going back to my mini documentary in 2009.

In this video, we're gonna look at what President Trump and Administrator Zeldin did and why it matters. And then we're [00:01:00] gonna trace the ideological roots of the climate change scare all the way back to their Malthusian origins. And finally, we're gonna look at what the actual science says about CO2, because it turns out the planet is doing just fine.

On February 12th, president Trump and EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin announced the rescinding of the so-called Endangerment Finding. This was a massive bureaucratic overreach from the Obama administration, enacted on December 7th, 2009.

December 7th, 2009, a date which will live in infamy.

After failing to get actual climate legislation passed through the Congress, Obama's EPA simply declared that CO2 and other greenhouse gases were pollutants and therefore subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. No new law, no congressional vote, just a bureaucratic decree.

Referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach, the [00:02:00] 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding is now eliminated. 16 years ago, an ideological crusade within the Obama administration, set off the most costly regulatory power grab our country has ever experienced. The 2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry. It claimed new powers over the vehicles we drive, even though the best reading of the Clean Air Act clearly states otherwise.

That flimsy claim became the legal basis for a cascade of federal programs, pushing things like start- stop engine systems on vehicles, extreme fuel economy mandates, and an effort to force Americans into electric vehicles that they don't want. Under President Trump. That overreach has now been rescinded.

Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are [00:03:00] officially terminating the so-called Endangerment Finding, a disastrous Obama era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers. Prices went up incredibly for a worse product. This action will eliminate over $1.3 trillion of regulatory costs and help bring car prices tumbling down dramatically.

This was the correct move. The Clean Air Act of the 1970s was a genuine success, reducing actual pollutants, including lead and particulates. But greenhouse gases are not comparable pollutants, especially CO2. CO2 is a naturally occurring gas that every animal on the planet exhales and that every plant depends upon for survival.

The claim that CO2 belongs in the same category as lead or smog is not a scientific conclusion, it's an ideological one.

There are a number of places [00:04:00] that do a solid job debunking the flimsy climate science behind the catastrophe narrative pushed by people like Governor Newsom.

The websites for "Watts Up With That?" "The Heartland Institute," and "The Heritage Foundation" all provide solid summaries of where the climate science actually stands.

For example, published studies have shown that climate models have been systematically overestimating the warming impact of CO2.

And even the IPCC's own reports acknowledge there have been no clear increases in most categories of extreme weather, despite what you constantly hear from the media.

But this was never actually about science, it's about an ideology— a mind virus, as some now call it.

We can trace key origins of the modern climate change scare to a 1975 conference titled "The Atmosphere Endangered and Endangering," organized by anthropologist Margaret Mead. This conference assembled an array of atmospheric scientists who went on to become leading advocates of the manmade climate change [00:05:00] catastrophe narrative.

Notable names included Steven Schneider, George Woodwell, and John Holdren. The last name is worth highlighting: John Holdren later became the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Obama, the very administration that enacted the 2009 endangerment finding.

The stated purpose of this 1975 endangered atmosphere conference was to lay the groundwork for what they called coming "laws of the atmosphere," to build scientific consensus around the idea that mankind is having a detrimental impact on the planet. And Mead wasn't shy about what she meant. She told the assembled scientists:

"What we need from scientists are estimates, presented with sufficient conservatism and plausibility, but at the same time as free as possible from internal disagreements, that can be exploited by political interests, that will allow us to start building a system of artificial but effective warnings. Warnings which [00:06:00] parallel the instincts of animals who flee before the hurricane."

Let that sink in. Mead's directive to the gathering of scientists was no internal disagreements, and help us build artificial but effective warnings to frighten the public into compliance, just as animals are frightened by an approaching storm.

This view, that humanity should be scared into compliance and managed like animals, did not emerge out of nowhere. Margaret Mead had just come from the 1974 United Nations World Population Conference in Romania, where she said it was concluded that human population growth was a central problem facing the planet. From this, to her later work with Planned Parenthood, to her association with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich, Mead was a committed population control advocate. The focus on climate came second, as a consequence, the Malthusian view of mankind came first, [00:07:00] as the cause.

We can trace this lineage further. Before Mead, there was Sir Julian Huxley, the leading British eugenics who spearheaded the rebranding of eugenics as environmentalism following World War 2. Before Huxley, there was Thomas Malthus who argued that population growth would always outstrip the Earth's capacity to support it. And before Malthus, you can find the same archetype in the legend of Zeus who punished Prometheus for giving mankind the knowledge and power to improve his condition.

This is the through-line. When we see the absurd claim that CO2 is a pollutant, we can't treat that as merely a scientific error to be corrected with better data. It is the expression of a deep, persistent ideology that views human growth, development, and progress as inherently bad— an ideology with a very long history and very powerful institutional backers.

But the Malthusians are wrong. Mankind is a unique creative force for good on this planet. And if you appreciate my [00:08:00] focus on the beauty of human progress, make sure to support this channel by subscribing and signing up for the free Promethean Action Science Newsletter using the link below and consider becoming a paid member.

Regarding CO2 itself, here's the question worth asking: with all the news outlets and elite institutions pushing climate scare stories, how many of them devote even a single sentence to the documented beneficial effects of increased CO2?

The actual science of CO2 is being covered well by the CO2 Coalition, a group founded by leading scientists including Princeton University Professor Emeritus William Happer. And what the science shows is impressive. It's no secret that CO2 acts as a fertilizer for plant life. This has been demonstrated in controlled experiments for over a century, and greenhouse operators have been adding CO2 to boost yields for many decades. So what happens when we apply that understanding globally? The roughly 25% increase in atmospheric [00:09:00] CO2 during the 20th century has led to an approximately 15% increase in total global crop productivity.

As amazing as that is, the impact goes beyond even agriculture. Satellite measurements show that total plant life across the entire planet has been increasing.

Since the early 1980s, global photosynthesis has increased by approximately 12%. Multiple factors contribute to this global greening, including irrigation and land management, but CO2 fertilization is a major driver.

So the net effect of mankind shifting from a wood and biomass- powered economy to a fossil fuel- powered economy includes a measurable, documented greening of the planet. The trees really are celebrating.

And we can take this even deeper, as we've covered in an earlier video, progress throughout the universe, from galaxies and stars, to plant, animal, and human life can be measured by a singular metric: the concentration of energy [00:10:00] flows through a system, or power per mass.

This gives us a way to measure the progressive development of life and the biosphere across evolutionary time, and when we apply that metric to the impact of human civilization on the biosphere, we don't find the catastrophe that the climate cult promises, we find the opposite. Under human management, the power per mass of the entire biosphere has nearly double. Think about what that means, by the very metric that measures universal development, mankind's governance of this planet is measured by a net positive change.

So, what does all this mean? God's directive to mankind from Genesis 1: 28 actually provides a better scientific understanding of mankind's place in the natural world than what we see from the climate change cult.

"God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that [00:11:00] moveth upon the Earth."

Mankind's dominion over the natural world is not a pathology to be suppressed, it is the reality of our existence, and the data confirms that.

Poor stewardship is a real problem, and its effects can be bad. But the solution to poor stewardship is not Malthusianism, it is not restricting human growth, capping energy use, or treating CO2 as a poison. The solution is to embrace the scientific reality that mankind is a unique creative force in a developing universe, cultivate a culture that celebrates that, and take seriously the responsibility of genuine stewardship that comes with it.

With that, we celebrate President Trump and Administrator Zeldin for rescinding the Obama Administration's claim that CO2 is a pollutant. Obama's overreach didn't just violate statutory law, it violated natural law. The climate change cult has never been primarily about science. It's the latest institutional expression of a Malthusian [00:12:00] ideology that stretches back centuries, one that views human growth and development as a threat.

The science tells a different story: increased cO2 is greening the planet, human civilization has nearly doubled the power per mass of the biosphere, and President Trump's energy policies are more aligned with natural law than anything the green movement has ever proposed.

If you wanna know more about the Malthusian origins of environmentalism, make sure to check out my earlier video, " Will Trump's Fusion Push End the Malthusians?"

And if you want to learn about the science of power per mass as a universal metric for development, check out, "The Universal Law Underlying President Trump's Energy Policy."