Most people will never read a Unified Agenda - the twice-yearly list of what federal agencies plan to do to the rules. A July 22 analysis of the Administration's 2026 edition found, inside it, the EPA's plan to repeal the Carbon Pollution Standards this summer [1].
The standard being removed, catalogued as RIN 2060-AW55, requires coal and gas power plants to cut roughly 90 percent of their carbon emissions [1]. Repealing it lifts that requirement.
The same analysis puts numbers to what the repeal does. It would increase emissions by about 123 million metric tons by 2035, cause an estimated 120 to 1,100 additional air-pollution deaths every year, and produce $109 to $497 billion in climate damages [1].
It does not travel alone. The agenda also moves to suspend the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program and to delay methane reporting for oil and gas into the 2030s, and to roll back renewable rights-of-way and offshore-wind rules [1] - a set of changes that share a direction and a low public profile.
The distance between a line item and a body count is the whole point of reading the agenda. This one translates to as many as 1,100 additional American deaths a year, the price of letting power plants stop cutting their carbon [1].
