The Trump administration’s long train of abuses against the environment is so willfully nefarious that it can be difficult to pinpoint which of its depredations is the worst. The administration has attempted to scrap carbon pollution standards for power plants, moved to withdraw the US from the historic Paris climate agreement, redrawn national monuments to make way for fossil fuel extraction, ditched rules to reduce methane emissions, and mounted an attack on tailpipe standards that is so overboard that even some automakers are opposed to the White House’s plans. Now comes a new usurpation that would seem a ridiculous caricature of anti-environmentalism were it not so worrisome: a proposal to dramatically weaken the Endangered Species Act.  

In August, the Interior Department announced a new set of rules for Endangered Species Act implementation that—if they survive a court challenge from environmental groups including the Sierra Club—would make it harder to protect species suffering from human actions. Among other provisions, the new rules would change how the US Fish and Wildlife Service treats species designated as “threatened,” which is one level below an “endangered” listing. Currently, threatened species receive the same protections as endangered ones; the Trump administration proposes creating species-specific protection plans, which will make it more difficult and time-consuming to protect threatened species. The proposed rule changes would also make it harder for officials to consider the impacts of global climate change when deciding whether to list a species. The ESA says a species deserves to be listed as endangered or threatened if it is likely to be extirpated “within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.” The Trump administration wants to redefine “foreseeable future” to only include “probable” threats—a measure that will make it harder to consider threats forecast by climate change models. A parallel proposed rule change would reduce the USFWS’s ability to consider climate change when designating what’s called “critical habitat,” the territory a species needs to recover. 

These edits to the ESA are a sort of death by a thousand cuts. At the same time, the Trump administration is proposing a change that strikes right at the heart of the act. The White House wants to allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to begin calculating the economic costs of wildlife protection as it decides whether to list a species as threatened or endangered. Or, simpler, in the midst of an extinction crisis, Trump and company want to place a price tag on other forms of life. 

The Endangered Species Act is probably the most radical of US environmental laws. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Organic Act that established the National Park Service are all invaluable public interest laws that have been essential tools for protecting air, lands, waters. But they are all basically focused on conserving natural resources for people. In contrast, the Endangered Species Act is, at its heart, a biocentric law. It recognizes that other species have intrinsic value, regardless of whether they provide any instrumental value to humans.  

At the core of this expression of ecological solidarity is the principle that economics shouldn’t be part of the calculation of whether to protect a species. When Congress passed the law in 1973 (by an overwhelming vote of 355 to 4 in the House of Representatives), lawmakers were explicit that economic considerations shouldn’t sway the decision-making process of listing. This ideal was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 1978 case over the ESA, Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, when a majority of justices concluded that “it is clear from the act's legislative history that Congress intended to halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction—whatever the cost.”  

The Trump administration’s proposed rewrite of the ESA would overturn the statute’s profound declaration about the value of all species. In its attempt to erode the foundations of the ESA, the administration is doing a careful dance and insisting that studies about the economic cost of listing a species (for example, the loss of logging profits) would be for informational purposes only and offered as a kind of addendum. But, as The New York Times put it in a withering editorial about the proposed rollback, “let’s not be naïve.” Is there any doubt that the presence of a cost-benefit analysis would influence government officials, especially in a government like our current one, stocked as it is with former fossil fuel executives? Profit-seeking would eventually eclipse the need to protect at-risk species.  

Ideally, it will never come to that. The ESA’s moral clarity—the understanding that extinction is forever and that there are no substitutes for any individual species—must not be compromised. To put a price tag on life is, simply, immoral. 

The task of defending the Endangered Species Act now rests with the courts, which will decide on whether the Trump administration’s proposed changes are lawful. In making their rulings, judges rely on a number of factors: legal precedents, the intent of lawmakers when crafting laws, and (though it drives originalists nuts) the consensus values of contemporary society. On this last point, there is good news. According to a long-running Gallup poll, 65 percent of Americans say environmental protection should take precedence over economic growth when the two goals conflict—the strongest support for the environment that pollsters asking this question have witnessed in nearly 20 years.  

As they consider the fate of the Endangered Species Act, the courts will hopefully follow the wisdom of the American public rather than the avaricious short-sightedness of the Trump administration.