When U.S. President-elect Donald Trump nominated former Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump described him as a “True fighter for America First policies.”
Zeldin, the statement added, spent eight years in Congress as a vocal advocate on foreign policy, border security, military affairs, combating antisemitism, environmental issues and energy policy.
Shortly after the announcement was made, Zeldin, a native from Long Island, New York who is married with twin daughters, took to the X social media platform, leaving no doubt about his priorities for his new role. He promised to “restore US energy dominance, revitalize the auto industry, bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI.”
Environmental record
Zeldin, who has a law degree from Albany Law School, has vowed to protect access to clean air and clean water. While in Congress, he voted in favor of limiting the presence of toxic substances known as PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water.
He stood against offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to protect coastal communities and marine wildlife from oil spills. Environmental organizations have also highlighted Zeldin’s support for the Great American Outdoors Act, which increased funding for maintenance of public lands and waters.
The League of Conservation Voters, or LCV, however, noted in reaction to Zeldin’s nomination that during his four terms in Congress, he voted in favor of environmental legislation just 14% of the time.
The LCV’s voting tracker shows Zeldin rejected most of the legislative proposals related to climate change. The Republican never served on committees with oversight of environmental policy, but he was part of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, a short-lived bipartisan effort tasked with building a constructive dialogue on climate change.
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Change of priorities
At this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres renewed his call for countries to move away from burning fossil fuels, the primary cause of global warming.
“The sound you hear is the ticking clock. We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and time is not on our side,” Guterres said.
Under Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, the EPA has set limits on the production of oil and gas and prioritized the production of clean and renewable power in a bid to fight climate change.
The EPA’s website currently states that “understanding and addressing climate change is critical to the agency’s mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
President-elect Trump’s economic vision for the country will now take precedence. “We will blast through every bureaucratic hurdle to issue rapid approvals for new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants, new electric plants and reactors of all types,” Trump told attendees at The Economic Club of New York on September 5.
Zeldin expressed similar views when running for New York governor in 2022. “We should reverse the state’s ban on the safe extraction of natural gas. Approve new pipeline applications,” he said during a campaign event.
If confirmed to the Cabinet post, Zeldin says he will move swiftly to implement Trump’s economic agenda and roll back a wide range of Biden-era environmental protections on Day One.
“There are regulations that the left wing of this country have been advocating through regulatory power that ends up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction,” he told Fox News on November 11.
Climate action in US
The Trump administration will have broad power to reverse several EPA rules including those curbing carbon emissions from power plants or vehicles. However, climate action in the United States won’t come to a complete halt, according to Carbon Direct policy analyst Zara Ahmed.
“Consumers can choose to purchase a low-emissions vehicle. States can choose to enact their own regulations about emissions,” she told the Reuters news agency.
Some information is from AP, AFP and Reuters.
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