EPA nominee Lee Zeldin. Image via SecretName101 on wikimedia
It looks like the next head of the EPA will likely be Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman and failed gubernatorial bid, and he is already promising policy measures that will make the air more polluted and increase health and fuel costs for Americans.
The nominee does not have an extensive environmental background, without many direct comments on environmental topics.
As a result, various environmental organizations have issued statements pointing to his poor record on environmental laws in the past and expressing concern about his potentially dangerous future reversals. In 2020, while in Congress, he received the worst environmental score of the entire New York congressional delegation.
Estimates of the probability of these destructive actions can be reported in the period between 2017-2021, which was marked by massive corruption by the two heads of the EPA with deep ties to the oil and gas and coal industries.
The first of those EPA heads, Scott Pruitt, gained notoriety by suing the EPA to stop clean air, and during his tenure he became so corrupt that he was forced to resign — an executive action by more than 3,700 executives.
The second, Andrew Wheeler, was a coal lobbyist who tried to rescue a $70 billion bailout of the coal industry and showed remarkable ignorance and determination when discussing the state of his organization's laws.
What we do know about Zeldin's plans was announced this morning, when he announced to the media that he wants to withdraw from the EPA's four-year-old rules.
Although we do not know what specific laws he intends to direct, there may be sweeping and/or dispersal actions to reduce the progress of the last four years. The regulations implemented by the EPA under President Biden will save Americans $250B/year in health and energy costs and save 200k lives in total.
Rolling back those regulations, as Zeldin has said he wants to do, would cost Americans money in higher health and fuel costs, and would cause more deaths.
The reason this rollback would cause more deaths and higher costs is because it would increase air pollution, which is a major cause of death and disease and a major drag on economic productivity. Rollbacks will increase costs because targeted regulations focus on efficiency, and reducing efficiency means higher energy costs for the nation as a whole.
We also know that Zeldin received the same amount of money from the oil and gas industry as Trump's corrupt EPA pick. Zeldin received $269,608 during his lifetime in political bribery from the Oil and Gas industry – not his largest share of contributions when the industry is ranked, but still significant. This is similar to the price tag of corrupt oil and gas stooge Scott Pruitt, who earned nearly $300k in oil and gas bribes for his work on improving air quality before being appointed EPA chief whistleblower.
In exchange for these relatively low price tags, the richest and most destructive industry in the history of the world – which receives more than 700 billion in subsidies annually in the US alone – received a huge boost in the harmful actions of the agency tasked with keeping the atmosphere. you breathe clean.
Alongside his statements today, Zeldin also said that it would do these updates “while protecting access to clean air and water,” but it remains to be seen how that will happen. Given that some of the policy actions he has proposed are seriously damaging to clean air, this quote sounds like a falsehood. He also mentioned something about artificial intelligence, which isn't clear what the EPA is up to (unless he was talking about doing something about the huge unnecessary energy use in the industry, but that seems unlikely).
Zeldin said he wants to ensure that the US has “the power to dominate,” which cannot be achieved with any strategy that focuses far from the technology of the future. The EPA's actions of the last four years, and President Biden's actions as a whole, all come together in a strategy to bring EV and battery production to the US so that the US is ready to supply the products of the future.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, is already seeking to roll back policies that have successfully led to billions in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the green industry, despite having no idea what those policies are in the first place.
While in Congress, Zeldin voted against the Deflation Act, a bill that brought those jobs and billions in investment to the US. But in yet another episode of Orwellian doublespeak, Zeldin said today that he wants to “bring American jobs back to the auto industry,” even though it's clear that he and Mr. Trump both want to roll back policies that have brought back jobs to the American auto industry.
All told, Zeldin was also a member of the bipartisan “climate solutions caucus” in 2016, and voted against a Republican amendment to cut EPA funding in 2020. So it's not all bad, it's 86% bad.
And there is another silver lining here. At the beginning of this year, the “Supreme” Court made a fool of itself and pointed out that government agencies should be delayed in doing their job if they end the so-called Chevron doctrine.
You can read more about that here, but in short, the proposal would make it harder for the EPA to change regulations going forward. So Zeldin may have his work cut out for him, as he may have to fight scientists at his institution and the courts to implement the air pollution policies he has shown he wants to implement.
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