John Tobin

Professor of Practice at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management

John Tobin-de la Puente is a professor of practice at Cornell University’s SC Johnson College of Business, and a former managing director and global head of sustainability at Credit Suisse. He says he doesn’t expect companies to make long-term plans based on the Trump administration’s actions.

Tobin-de la Puente says: 

“Business will not want to rely on an executive action such as this—rather than legislation coming out of the US Congress—in its long-term planning. Business operates on a far longer time scale than the four-year cycle of presidential elections, and to rely on the current Administration’s announced action would be imprudent, especially given the substantial likelihood that the next Administration will once again regulate carbon emissions.”  

Robert Howarth

David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology

Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell, says EPA and the Trump administration are ‘throwing science to the wind,’ if they reverse the endangerment finding. 

Howarth says:

“The basic science on greenhouse gases from fossil fuels as a driver of climate change has been clear for well over a century. By the 1970s, it was clear that the burning of fossil fuels, if continued unabated, would start to lead to climate disruption by early in this 21st century.  

“By 2009 when the EPA made the endangerment finding, the science was so clear that the EPA really had no other choice. And since then, the science has gotten even stronger, particularly regarding attributing harm to the changing climate: we can now say with certainty that rising CO2 and methane is altering the climate, and that this is leading to longer and more severe droughts, floods, hurricanes and larger and more intense fires.”