Analysis of: How Trump’s EPA rollbacks could harm our air and water – and worsen global heating
The Guardian | January 30, 2026
TL;DR
The EPA has been captured by fossil fuel and chemical capital, systematically dismantling 66 environmental protections in one year to boost corporate profits. Working-class communities will bear the health costs while capital externalizes pollution onto public bodies and ecosystems.
Analytical Focus:Class Analysis Contradictions Material Conditions
The systematic dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Trump administration represents a textbook case of regulatory capture—where the capitalist class seizes direct control of state apparatus designed to constrain its profit-making activities. With former chemical industry executives appointed to lead chemical safety programs and 66 deregulatory actions in a single year, we witness not mere policy adjustment but a fundamental restructuring of the relationship between capital, the state, and public health. The class character of these policies is explicit: exemptions flow to coal plants and chemical manufacturers while the agency stops calculating the monetary value of lives saved, acknowledging only costs to business. The material stakes are stark. Clean air and water regulations exist because capitalist production generates pollution as an externality—a cost imposed on society rather than absorbed by producers. By dismantling PFAS limits, weakening Clean Air Act enforcement, and attacking the endangerment finding that underlies all climate regulation, the EPA is effectively transferring these costs from corporate balance sheets onto working-class bodies. The communities near coal plants, chemical facilities, and contaminated water systems—disproportionately poor and communities of color—will experience increased cancer rates, developmental harm, and respiratory disease. The ideological dimension is equally significant. The EPA spokesperson's framing of previous regulations as 'economy-crushing' naturalizes the assumption that corporate profits and public health exist in zero-sum competition. This obscures the fundamental question: whose economy? The metabolic rift between capitalist production and ecological sustainability widens as the state abandons even minimal efforts to regulate capital's relationship with nature, ensuring that the costs of environmental destruction will be socialized across generations while the benefits of deregulation accrue immediately to shareholders.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Fossil fuel industry (coal plants, oil and gas companies), Chemical manufacturing capital, Working-class communities near polluting facilities, Environmental justice communities (predominantly low-income, communities of color), State bureaucracy (EPA leadership captured by industry), Professional-managerial class (scientists, health professionals, former regulators), Advocacy organizations representing affected communities
Beneficiaries: Coal plant operators receiving pollution exemptions, Chemical manufacturers avoiding toxic substance restrictions, Fossil fuel capital avoiding greenhouse gas regulations, Shareholders of polluting industries, Formaldehyde and methylene chloride producers
Harmed Parties: Residents near coal plants and chemical facilities, Children exposed to pesticides and food contaminants, Communities relying on water systems with PFAS contamination, Workers in industries using toxic chemicals, Future generations facing accelerated climate change, Rural communities losing research funding on toxic hazards
The appointment of former chemical industry executives to lead EPA chemical safety programs represents direct class rule—capital governing the very agency designed to regulate it. The power asymmetry is structural: industry can seek exemptions by 'simply sending an email,' while affected communities must organize, litigate, and protest for basic protections. The elimination of advisory committees and research offices further concentrates power by dismantling the technical capacity for independent assessment of industry claims.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Compliance costs for pollution controls estimated in billions, Profit margins of coal, chemical, and petrochemical industries, $40 million in cancelled scientific research grants, Healthcare costs externalized onto workers and public systems, Property values in contaminated communities, Insurance costs for climate-related disasters
Environmental regulations represent a contested boundary where the state mediates between capital's drive to minimize production costs and the reproduction of labor power (keeping workers healthy enough to work). By eliminating this mediation, the EPA allows capital to treat workers' bodies and communities as sites of cost externalization. The relations of production in polluting industries depend on this externalization—profits would diminish if companies internalized the true costs of their environmental impacts.
Resources at Stake: Clean air as a public resource being enclosed for private profit, Water systems serving millions of Americans, Atmospheric carbon budget (finite resource being appropriated), Public health infrastructure and research capacity, Scientific knowledge production about toxic hazards, Intergenerational environmental commons
Historical Context
Precedents: Reagan-era EPA under Anne Gorsuch (1981-83) which similarly gutted enforcement, Neoliberal deregulation wave beginning in 1970s-80s, First Trump administration EPA rollbacks (2017-2021), Industry capture of regulatory agencies throughout 20th century, Historical pattern of environmental costs imposed on working-class communities
This represents an intensification of neoliberal governance logic, but goes beyond the typical 'pendulum swing' between tighter and looser regulation. The attack on the endangerment finding—the legal foundation for all climate regulation—aims to permanently restructure state capacity rather than merely adjust policy within existing frameworks. This aligns with late neoliberalism's tendency toward more explicit class warfare as contradictions intensify and the pretense of neutral governance erodes.
Contradictions
Primary: The fundamental contradiction between capital accumulation and ecological sustainability: capitalism requires endless expansion and cost externalization, while the biosphere has finite absorptive capacity. The EPA's capture represents capital temporarily resolving this in its favor by eliminating regulatory constraints, but this accelerates the underlying ecological crisis.
Secondary: Contradiction between the stated mission of protecting human health and actual policy of prioritizing industry profits, Contradiction between 'national security' justification for exemptions and actual national security threats from climate change, Contradiction between claims of 'cleanest air in decades' and policies that will reverse this trajectory, Contradiction between 'Make America Healthy Again' rhetoric and policies increasing toxic exposure
Short-term, capital wins by eliminating regulatory costs. Medium-term, health and environmental crises will intensify, creating pressure for re-regulation and potentially more radical responses. The contradictions may sharpen class consciousness as communities experience direct health impacts while observing corporate profits. Legal challenges may slow implementation but cannot resolve the underlying class conflict. Long-term resolution requires either ecological catastrophe or fundamental transformation of production relations.
Global Interconnections
The EPA rollbacks connect to global dynamics of environmental imperialism, where core capitalist nations externalize pollution costs both domestically (onto marginalized communities) and globally (through carbon emissions and toxic waste exports). The attack on climate regulation occurs as Global South nations disproportionately suffer climate impacts while bearing least historical responsibility for emissions. U.S. regulatory retreat also creates a 'race to the bottom' dynamic, pressuring other nations to weaken environmental standards to remain competitive. This connects to broader patterns of neoliberal state transformation, where agencies designed to manage capitalism's contradictions are captured or dismantled. The simultaneous attacks on environmental regulation, public health infrastructure, and scientific research capacity reflect capital's decreasing tolerance for any constraints on accumulation during a period of intensifying systemic crisis. The metabolic rift between capitalist production and natural cycles widens globally as the world's largest historical emitter abandons even minimal climate commitments.
Conclusion
The capture of the EPA reveals the limits of regulatory solutions to capitalism's ecological contradictions—agencies designed to manage externalities can themselves become instruments of capital when class forces shift. For working-class communities, this clarifies that environmental protection cannot be delegated to captured state institutions but requires organized collective power. The most affected communities—those near coal plants, in chemical corridors, drinking contaminated water—have material interests in building coalitions that connect environmental justice to broader class struggle. As health impacts materialize, they may generate new sites of resistance, but the lag between policy and consequence means significant harm will occur first. The strategic question becomes whether environmental movements can move beyond appeals to captured regulators toward building independent working-class power capable of directly confronting polluting capital.
Suggested Reading
- Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature by John Bellamy Foster (2000) Foster's analysis of Marx's concept of metabolic rift directly illuminates how capitalist production disrupts natural cycles—precisely what EPA deregulation accelerates by removing constraints on pollution.
- Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World by Jason Hickel (2020) Hickel examines how capitalist growth imperatives conflict with ecological limits, providing accessible analysis of why regulatory capture is systemic rather than aberrational.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's analysis of how crises enable rapid deregulation parallels the current EPA transformation, showing how capital exploits political moments to permanently restructure state-market relations.
- Women, Race & Class by Angela Davis (1981) Davis's intersectional analysis helps understand why environmental harms concentrate in working-class communities of color—the 'environmental justice' dimension central to this story.