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The EPA's new mission, explained [1]
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Date: 2025-04-11
When I was a boy, my grandfather told me that if you pay attention, you can learn something new every day. I took that to heart, and have tried to be mindful of everything around me. One benefit of this effort was that I discovered life is full of surprises, many of them pleasant…but some less so.
Imagine my surprise, for example, when Lee Zeldin, Donald Trump’s recently appointed head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), explained, upon taking office, that organization’s function. It is, he said in a two-minute video he posted on X to introduce himself and his policies to the public, “to lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
Silly me. Ever since the EPA was established in 1970, I’ve thought its purpose was to protect the environment and, by extension, protect the American people from environmental hazards. I thought the Agency was supposed to enforce the Clean Air Act and regulate airborne pollutants; monitor and curb chemical contamination from asbestos, formaldehyde, lead and pesticides; set drinking water safety and quality standards; ensure environmentally sound waste disposal and oversee the cleanup of contaminated sites, including Superfund sites.
But Zeldin didn’t mention any of those things in his video. Instead, he explained, “from Day 1 [of his current term] Mr. Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living. We at the EPA will do our part to power the great American comeback.’
By “energy,” I assume Zeldin means fossil fuels, since no other energy source has been promoted by the Administration. However, due to my limited understanding of policy nuances, evidenced by the fact that I didn’t know what the EPA’s actual purpose is, I’ll leave it to the reader to decipher what he meant by “lower the cost of living.”
Pursuing these objectives, Zeldin, in his video, outlined a series of measures he boasted comprises “the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. History,” adding, “today the green new scam ends.”
The new policies loosen or eliminate more than two dozen protections against air and water pollution, including those on carcinogenic smokestack soot, the neurotoxin mercury and smog. He plans to eliminate the “good neighbor rule,” that requires states to control their own pollution when winds carry it to neighboring states or countries, such as when, in the 1990s, acid rain generated by U.S. factories devastated forests in eastern Canada. Also, environmental regulations protecting poor and minority communities will no longer be enforced.
Additionally, the damage done by climate-change exacerbated events such as floods, wildfires, and droughts will not be considered in policy making. And in what is perhaps the most far-reaching, long-term change, Zeldin’s agency will attempt to eliminate the EPA’s mandate to regulate greenhouse gases by rejecting the science that shows global warming is detrimental to society, claiming this to be “the holy grail of the climate change religion.”
Funny, I never knew that accepting the scientific findings that greenhouse gases cause climate change was a religion. But maybe that’s just me.
Zeldin’s aspirational goals are not yet settled law or policy. To make them so, the EPA would have to conduct a lengthy series of public hearings and justify the changes on environmental and economic grounds. Or, he can just ask President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency to fire the people who enforce the agency’s current rules.
Sadly, I’m no longer sure I’ll keep trying to learn something new every day. I might not be able to handle any more surprises.
A version of this article was published on the author’s blog at firebirdjournal.com
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