Zeldin’s Statements at Confirmation Hearing Directly Conflict with Administration’s First Day
During his confirmation hearing to be the next Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, former Congressman Lee Zeldin seemed to part, in some ways, from the extreme rhetoric his would-be boss has used to talk about climate change. While we had — and have — little doubt that Zeldin would not be the most zealous enforcer of critically important climate measures and regulations, his pledge that he shared what he saw as Americans’ “ultimate goal of having clean air and water” at least signaled that he understood the importance of both (even if he was short on details about how he’d go about that in a real, meaningful way). For a President who has seemed to prioritize dismantling, rather than empowering, government agencies, Trump’s nomination of Zeldin didn’t seem to be his worst. But just days after Zeldin’s testimony before the Senate, it became clear that the President would prioritize climate destruction ahead of clean air and water and would leave little room for Zeldin, or anyone else, to deal with the climate emergency in a meaningful way. At a time when we need to do more, the Trump climate agenda, entrusted to Zeldin to carry out, would be all about doing much, much less.
On Day One of the Trump administration, the President issued a flurry of executive orders that directly conflict with Mr. Zeldin’s eminently reasonable statements and will hamstring EPA’s ability to fight climate change and enforce our nation’s environmental laws. Take, for instance, Trump’s executive order that the United States has a “national energy emergency.” That order opens the doors for new oil and gas development and extraction throughout the country, most concerningly in Alaska, and would allow agencies to ignore the mandates of federal law like the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act in reviewing and approving those projects. In reality, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States is currently the largest producer of crude oil in the world, outpacing Russia and Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, in an effort to line the pockets of the oil and gas industry, this administration will sacrifice America’s ecological wealth for even more dollars.
Another example is Trump’s disdain for the Paris Climate Agreement. The Biden administration just recently completed its plan to comply with that global agreement, wherein the United States would cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent by 2035. Without hesitation, Trump tossed that plan into the garbage, claiming in his order that the Paris accords do not “reflect our country’s values” and “steer American taxpayer dollars” to other countries. With millions of Americans dealing with the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires — a conflagration unquestionably fueled by climate change — withdrawing from the most important climate change agreement is a drastic dereliction of duty that will put millions of Americans in harm’s way. We need to save the planet so our children and grandchildren have a place to inhabit, not squeeze more dollars out of the Earth so billionaires can get another yacht.
Against this backdrop, one must question how presumptive-Administrator Zeldin will do what he said he would do. It will be nearly impossible for the federal government to address climate change while embracing the antiquated “drill baby drill” mentality. Fortunately, our political system once had substantially more common sense and civility than what we see today. When Congress passed our nation’s bedrock environmental laws in the 1960s and ‘70s, they foresaw the tension between powerful corporate interests and environmental protection. They understood that government and regulators can become captured and coopted by industry through any number of political tools, undermining the ability of watchdog agencies to enforce the law.
It is for this reason that the majority of our laws include the ability of everyday people to step into the shoes of environmental prosecutors to bring federal lawsuits against polluters. These “citizen suits” serve as a check and balance against government inaction and empower our local communities to protect their local ecological resources. At Public Justice, we harness the power of citizen suits to bring transformative change for the victims of corporate greed, exploitation, and pollution. We’ve spent four decades successfully litigating citizen enforcement actions against environmental miscreants, developing and strengthening the law while protecting future access by impacted communities to the courts. Today, that access is more important than ever.
Congressman Zeldin seems to agree with us about the importance of this work, at least based on what he said at his hearing. But with Trump using his bully pulpit to take aim at the environment from day one, it seems unlikely to matter what Mr. Zeldin said during his confirmation hearing. While we and our colleagues who care about the sustainability of our planet would welcome the opportunity to partner with the EPA to advance a climate-saving agenda, it is abundantly clear that environmental stakeholders will not be offered a seat at any Trump administration table. So, for now, we will need to rely on the tools Congress enacted over fifty years ago in recognition of the dangerous scenario unfolding before our eyes. Citizen suits are the firewall between a captured environmental regulator and powerful economic interests. EPA may choose to sleep at the wheel for the next four years, but groups like Public Justice will vigilantly be watching and enforcing our Nation’s environmental laws against polluters and the government alike.
