In a barrage of declarations on Wednesday, the Trump administration said it would remove dozens of times the country's most important environmental regulations, including legal basis that can limit pollution from tailpipes and chimneys, protect wetlands, and regulating greenhouse gases that heat the planet.
But beyond that, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin reframed the purpose of the EPA in a two-minute, 18-second video posted to X, with Zeldin boasting about the changes, saying his agency's mission is to “reduce the costs of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
“From the first day of the campaign trajectory, President Trump has fulfilled his promise to unleash his energy control and reduce the cost of living,” Zeldin said. “We at the EPA will do our part to promote America's great comeback.”
Since its founding in 1970, none of the video mentioned the Twin's doctrines that led the environmental and public health protection, the environment and public health, and agents.
The EPA has no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce. The original administrator, William D. Lackelschaus, explained its mission to the country a few weeks after the EPA was created by President Richard M. Nixon. He said the agency will focus on research, standards and enforcement in five areas: air pollution, water pollution, waste disposal, radiation and pesticides.
Zeldin said the EPA will eliminate more than 20 protections against air and water pollution. It overturns the limits on soot from chimneys, which are neurotoxins, which are associated with respiratory problems and early deaths in humans. It will remove the “good neighbours rules” that the state requires that states deal with their own pollution when transported to nearby states by the wind. And it would eliminate enforcement efforts that prioritize the protection of poor and minority communities.
Additionally, when an agency creates an environmental policy, it will no longer take into account the costs to society from wildfires, droughts, storms and other disasters that can be exacerbated by the pollution associated with that policy.
In perhaps the most consequential act, the agency said it would work to erase the EPA's legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by reviewing decades of science that shows global warming is at risk for humanity. In his video, Zeldin makes fun of his legal foundation as “the holy grail of climate change religion.”
Zeldin called his actions Wednesday the “largest deregulation announcement in US history.” He added: “The Green New Scam is over as the EPA plays its part in the golden age of American success today.”
Presentations do not have the power of the law. In almost every case, the EPA undergoes a long process of public comment and needs to develop environmental and economic justifications for change.
President Trump, who called climate change a hoax, has campaigned on the fossil fuel company “drills, babies, drills” and on the promise to make regulations easier. Since returning to the White House, he has reduced the government's ability to combat global warming by freezing funds for a congressional approved climate program, fired scientists working on weather and climate forecasting, and reduced federal support for the transition from fossil fuels.
The United States is the world's largest historic carbon dioxide emitter, a greenhouse gas that warms a planet that scientists agree to promote climate change and totify hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts. Last year was the hottest in recorded history, with the US experiencing 27 disasters, each with at least $1 billion in cost adjusted to inflation, compared to the 1980 three.
Democrats and environmental activists have condemned Zeldin's move, accusing him of abandoning the EPA's responsibility to protect human health and the environment.
“Today is the day Trump's large oil megadonor paid,” said Sen. Sheldon White House, a Democrat from Rhode Island. He called the EPA and moved a series of attacks on clean air, clean water and affordable energy. “The administrator Zeldin clearly lied when he said he respects science and listens to experts,” White House said, referring to Zeldin's confirmation hearing.
Gina McCarthy, who served as EPA administrator for the Obama administration, said it was “the most disastrous day in EPA history.” Returning these rules is not merely a dishonorable thing, it is a threat to all of us. The agency has completely abandoned its mission to protect American health and well-being. ”
Jackie Wong, senior vice president of climate change and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said elimination or weakening regulations on cars, power plants and other power plants would lead to an increase in asthma, heart attacks and other health issues. “It's pointless to try to deny climate change harming our health and well-being as millions of Americans are trying to rebuild after a horrific wildfire and a hurricane that burned fuel to the climate.”
For months, the Trump administration signaled to reverse many of the climate regulations enacted during the Biden administration. But the cascade of Zeldin's timing announcements in the Wall Street Journal and online video was designed to attract attention before it was expected to deal with the oil and gas industry at its annual gathering in Houston.
By the morning, the agency had counted 31 design declarations, Zeldin said.
Top lobbying groups, including the automobile, oil, gas and chemical industries, among others, praised Zeldin's plans.
Anne Bradbury is the CEO of the American Exploration & Production Council, a lobbying group representing oil and gas companies, and is known as “Common Sense.” Auto Lobby John Bozzella, president of Auto Lobby's Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said the change will make the industry “global competitive.”
“American businesses were crippled during the previous administration by the previous regulatory onslaught that contributed to higher costs that families across the country felt,” said Marty Durbin, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He said, “This room supports a more balanced regulatory approach that protects the environment and supports greater economic growth.”
Groups that denial the established science of climate change also supported Zeldin's actions.
“The Biden EPA has ignored Congressional will, violated individual freedoms, trampled on property rights, and tried to force unreliable sources of electricity, such as wind and solar,” said Darren Baxt, a senior fellow at a think tank that promotes climate denial in a statement.
Some of the most important policy changes Zeldin said he was planning to do:
Roll back carbon dioxide emission limits from the power plant. Currently, the EPA needs existing coal-fired power plants and new gas plants built in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2039.
Rewriting tailpipe contamination standards designed to make the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks for sale in the US all-electric or hybrid by 2032.
Relaxing restrictions on mercury emissions from power plants, limiting soot and haze through burning of coal. Biden-era regulations aimed to reduce 70% emissions from mercury coal power plants, which are linked to child developmental damage.
A significant reduction in the “social costs” of carbon and economic estimates of the damage caused by the addition of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. Those numbers play an important role in weighing the costs and benefits of regulated industries.
Perhaps the most important move is an effort to revise the 2009 legal opinion known as “Danger Discovery” of the EPA, which concluded that increasing greenhouse gas emissions are dangerous to public health. This discovery gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Eliminating that makes it virtually impossible for the EPA to control climate pollution from cars, factories, power plants, and oil and gas wells.
Reversing the rules has long been a white whale for climate deniers. But in doing so, Trump's EPA needs to argue and demonstrate that greenhouse gas emissions pose no predictable threat to public health when decades of science say they are not.
Jonathan H. Adler, a conservative legal expert and environmental law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, said he doesn't think the Trump administration will be successful. “You have to explain decades of statements from all administrations to the negative outcomes that we can reasonably predict negative outcomes of climate change,” Adler said.
He called for efforts to unravel the dangers of “a good way to waste years of time and effort and not achieve anything.”
