In the following post, Dan Rather tells us about the terrible change in the Environmental Protection Agency. A change that puts our environment at the mercy of the oil and gas industry.
No one who has been paying attention thought Donald Trump would ever be a champion of the environment. But what occurred yesterday goes further than our worst nightmares when it comes to protecting the earth and human life.
Time again to ask, what are they thinking? Are they thinking? As it has been so often with the Trump administration, what is happening is dangerous — for our country and for the world.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seems to have undergone an overnight rebrand, one that looks as if it were written and directed by the oil and gas industry.
The core mission of the EPA, since its inception during the Nixon administration, has been to protect human health and the environment. No longer. Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, who, by the way, is a lawyer and former congressman — his only qualification for running the agency is fealty to Trump — said yesterday that the new mission of the agency is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
This anti-environmental agenda comes at a time when global temperatures continue their steep rise and weather events become more frequent, more costly, and more deadly. Last year was the hottest year on record, after 2023. Twenty-seven weather disasters — hurricanes, floods, wildfires — costing more than $1 billion each hit the U.S. last year. In 1980 there were only three. You’d have to live in a cave to believe our climate isn’t changing, and quickly.
Zeldin announced a barrage of regulation rollbacks, promising to drive “a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.” He added that yesterday “marks the death of the Green New Scam.”
He went on to say that when the EPA creates new policies, it would no longer consider the cost of wildfires, droughts, storms, and other disasters to society that might be made worse by pollution connected to that policy.
Among the draconian changes Zeldin and Trump are seeking:
Reduce emissions standards for vehicles — 2024 saw the lowest CO2 car emissions to date.
Overturn rules to reduce soot and greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants — this would allow some of the oldest and dirtiest plants to stay online.
Eliminate efforts that protect poor and minority communities from pollution.
Ease limits on mercury emissions from power plants — mercury poisoning can cause developmental damage in children.
Get rid of the “good neighbor rule” that requires states to curb pollution when the wind carries it to neighboring states.
Eliminate the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit — which would cause a predicted 27% drop in sales of EVs.
Upend the EPA’s own “endangerment finding,” that greenhouse gases are warming the planet and that it presents a public health threat — this is the lynchpin for all of the agency’s greenhouse gas regulations.
“All of the climate protection rules, the rules to cut greenhouse gases from cars, trucks, power plants, from the oil and gas industry — all those rules are grounded in the [endangerment] finding,” explained David Doniger, a senior strategist and attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, to NBC News.
Reversing that foundational finding has been the ultimate goal of climate change deniers. But there is a reason it has never been tried before: An Everest-sized mountain of evidence, collected over decades, shows that greenhouse gas pollution causes climate change. Trump would have to prove the opposite in a court of law.
As for upending the rest of the regulations, that won’t be easy either.
“These are all rules and regulations. They can’t just wish them away with a press release. You have to tear a regulation down the same way it was built up. They have to make a proposal for each one of these things and explain reasoning and show evidence, and they have to have public comment and respond to public comment and then reach a final decision and defend it in court,” Doniger said.
The court of public opinion may be a challenge for Trump too.
