There’s nothing quite like watching a former president throw a tantrum on social media because his successor just erased his legacy with a signature. Barack Obama took to X on Thursday, hours after Trump killed the endangerment finding, and delivered exactly the kind of response you’d expect from a man watching his cathedral get bulldozed.
“Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
Classic Obama. Elegant. Measured. And completely detached from reality.
The Line That Destroys His Argument
Here’s what Obama didn’t mention — probably because it demolishes everything he just said. The EPA itself, in announcing the repeal, dropped a fact so devastating to the climate regulation crowd that it deserves to be printed on a billboard.
“EPA now finds that even if the U.S. were to eliminate all GHG emissions from all vehicles, there would be no material impact on global climate indicators through 2100.”
Read that again. The EPA — the agency Obama weaponized to regulate the American economy into submission — just admitted that eliminating every single vehicle emission in the entire country would do nothing measurable to the global climate through the end of the century.
Nothing. Zero material impact. The agency itself said it.
So what were the last sixteen years of fuel standards, emissions mandates, stop-start engines, and EV subsidies actually for? If the EPA’s own analysis says eliminating all vehicle emissions wouldn’t move the needle, then every regulation built on the endangerment finding was economic pain with no climate gain.
Today, the Trump administration repealed the endangerment finding: the ruling that served as the basis for limits on tailpipe emissions and power plant rules. Without it, we’ll be less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 12, 2026
Obama doesn’t want you to think about that. He wants you to feel scared. “Less safe, less healthy.” The same emotional playbook the climate industry has been running since Al Gore started his slideshow.
“Barack Hussein Obama”
Trump didn’t just repeal the finding. He made sure to use Obama’s full legal name while doing it — a move guaranteed to send a very specific signal to a very specific audience. Trump called the endangerment finding “disastrous” and the repeal “the largest deregulatory action in American history.”
Zeldin backed him up, noting that the finding exceeded the authority Congress actually gave the EPA. That’s the key legal argument that will matter when this inevitably hits the courts. The endangerment finding was never passed by Congress. It was a regulatory determination by an executive agency — one that subsequent administrations used to justify an ever-expanding web of mandates that touched every sector of the economy.
Congress didn’t vote to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. The EPA just decided it could, and everyone went along with it for sixteen years. Trump’s position is simple: the agency overstepped, the regulations were economically destructive, and the climate benefit was — by the EPA’s own admission — nonexistent.
Obama’s Real Concern
Read Obama’s post again. His closing phrase gives away the game: “all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
Not “all so Americans can pay less for energy.” Not “all so families can afford to heat their homes.” Not “all so the economy can grow and create jobs.” His framing is that the only beneficiary of deregulation is the fossil fuel industry. As if cheaper gas prices, lower electricity bills, and affordable consumer goods are somehow just side effects of corporate greed.
This is the worldview that produced the endangerment finding in the first place. Energy production isn’t a service that powers civilization — it’s a villain that needs to be controlled. The people who work in oil fields, coal mines, and refineries aren’t providing something essential — they’re the enemy. And any policy that makes their work easier or more profitable must be stopped, even if the EPA’s own numbers say the regulations accomplish nothing.
Obama built his climate legacy on the assumption that Americans would never question the science, never challenge the authority, and never elect someone willing to tear it down. He was wrong on all three counts.
The Legacy That Wasn’t
The endangerment finding was supposed to be permanent. It was designed to outlast any single president — a regulatory foundation so deeply embedded in federal law that no future administration could remove it without a political earthquake.
Trump brought the earthquake. And Obama is on social media watching the rubble settle, offering the same polished rhetoric that worked in 2009 but sounds hollow in 2026.
The EPA just told the country that every vehicle emission regulation built on Obama’s finding had no material impact on global climate. Obama’s response was to blame fossil fuel profits. That gap — between what the data says and what Obama wants you to feel — is the entire climate debate in miniature.
Feelings don’t change the temperature. And regulations that cost $1.3 trillion but accomplish nothing aren’t a legacy. They’re a monument to government overreach.
Trump just knocked it down. And all Obama could do was post about it.