The cost of climate change is measured in people, not dollars. Save the Endangerment Finding.

While countries around the world strive to protect their citizens from climate change, the U.S. government is attacking its citizens through climate regulations. Repealing the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2009 Endangerment Finding hits Americans where it hurts — their health.

This all started last year, when the Trump administration convened a group of five “climate contrarians” who have profited from their fringe views denying climate change and called it a “Climate Working Group”. The group quickly threw together a report full of cherry-picked data and other bad science. It was soon disbanded in the face of widespread scientific criticism, but the damage was done. The EPA — or a gutted version of it — used this sham Climate Working Group’s conclusions to propose a repeal of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, the foundation of our ability to regulate the polluting emissions that cause climate change and endanger human health.

Instead, they want environmental regulation to be based solely on costs to businesses — effectively valuing human health at $0 in their scientific models.

This government is trading our health for the interests of big business.

This battle of reports and regulations might seem abstract, but it threatens real people. In the nearly two decades since the Endangerment Finding was issued, the impacts of climate change on health have only become clearer. Air pollution and extreme weather cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the U.S. every year, impacting everyone, from newborns, to working-age people, to older adults — and it’s only getting worse.

Doctors understand this reality beyond the science. Pretending health has no economic value passes the cost of climate change and air pollution onto people who are sick.

These are our patients — the truck driver in Cleveland having an asthma attack because of smoke from the Canadian wildfires, the gig worker who wiped out on her e-bike in a torrential storm, the day laborer who gets kidney failure working day after day in extreme heat — and they are sacrificing their health to pay their rent and feed their families. It’s no surprise that 120 leading patient care organizations (including Doctors for America) signed a letter urging the EPA to save the Endangerment Finding.

None of this seems to matter to the Trump administration.

The EPA officially repealed the Endangerment Finding yesterday. As doctors, we can’t believe we’re having this conversation again. The evidence is clear — climate change is making us sicker and sicker, but we can limit that harm with better policy and regulations. This government is trading our health for the interests of big business.

We’re tired and angry, but we’re also scared. We’re doctors, but we’re also people.

We’ve been the new mom afraid to bring her newborn home from the NICU under skies turned orange by wildfire smoke. We’ve sat in our driveways during a flash flood warning wondering if it’s worth risking our safety to get to work on time. We stay up at night worrying about an America where a livable environment is a luxury.

The America we want puts its citizens over politics. It cares more about people than dollars. Repeal of the Endangerment Finding has made that America a pipe dream. Only real science, a government that protects its people, and strong climate regulations can get us there.

Madhury (Didi) Ray is a public health physician, a Drexel Med alum, and a Copello Fellow in Health Advocacy with Doctors for America. Olivia Rizzo is a pulmonologist from northeast Ohio and the co-chair of the Public Health Taskforce for Doctors for America.