This past Wednesday, Lee Zeldin, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced a startling change of direction for the government agency. Rather than committing itself to preserving and protecting our natural environment, the EPA will instead act as an arm of President Donald Trump’s proposed economic comeback plan. Zeldin made it clear he intends to deregulate as much as possible, with the intent of making goods across the board cheaper for purchase and consumption.
First created by executive order in 1970 under Richard Nixon, the EPA has since passed numerous regulations in the pursuit of bettering the environment. According to a press release from the EPA’s first administrator, the agency has a responsibility to research, monitor and regulate “air and water pollution, solid waste disposal, radiation and pesticides.” Under this purview, the EPA has passed multiple iterations of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and, perhaps most pertinently, released the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which is the closest the U.S. government has got to officially acknowledging the greenhouse gas-based climate crisis. It’s this finding that Zeldin is hoping to discredit in order to deregulate greenhouse gas emissions, because the endangerment finding serves as the basis for a slew of regulations aimed at cutting back greenhouse gas emissions.
Protections like these are deeply ingrained in U.S. law thanks to the Supreme Court, but they’ll be first on the hit list if they pose any kind of obstacle to economic growth. According to Zeldin’s new directives, the agency’s goal will be to aid Trump’s mission to “unleash energy dominance” and “lower the cost of living.” What both of these guidelines amount to is a whole lot of “reconsideration” of important automotive and industrial regulations, including those for oil company wastewater disposal, air toxicity standards for coal-fired plants, emissions standards for automobiles, as well as the aforementioned reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding.
The lowering of automotive costs is vital for Trump, whose illogical economic plan already poses a financial threat for the American people and automotive industry. Repealing regulations in order to make cars marginally less expensive could be his best and most immediate opportunity to sell to the American people the idea that he is actually improving their financial well-being. Even though this isn’t true, Trump certainly seems poised to use the agency as fodder for glossy press releases about deregulation and promoting business interests, giving off the impression that more is being done for the American people than there really is. Either way, the only people that will benefit are the large business executives who feel their bottom line is threatened by consideration for the polar bears.
It’s clear from Zeldin’s press release that he intends to turn the agency into another executive tool for Trump that will gleefully follow his 10-to-1 regulatory rule — the policy that for every regulation introduced, 10 must be repealed — to start slashing financially inconvenient environmental regulations. Naturally, this will come at the expense of life-saving and life-improving regulations that have long been understood as common sense by anyone who isn’t an oil tycoon. The Clean Air Act, for instance, saves hundreds of thousands of lives every year by regulating toxic greenhouse gas emissions. Yet Zeldin has already proposed multiple changes to how the new administration will monitor air-based pollution, which three former EPA administrators said will endanger the lives of millions.
Even if the EPA hadn’t fallen in line with Trump’s economic objectives, the agency has already lost much of its autonomous regulatory capacity. The 2024 Supreme Court decision overturning Chevron deference — the policy that executive agencies decide how vaguely worded statutes are implemented — means the EPA will no longer be able to guide how their policies are carried out and will be at the mercy of local courts that can determine whether the agency has overstepped their authority. The problem is that the government is currently operating under a Republican supermajority, and the conservative-leaning Supreme Court and Republican-dominated Congress will be able to dictate the EPA’s regulatory capabilities.
Nationwide legal injunctions against Trump’s policies are currently the best bet for stifling his legislative agenda. While the administration has already taken steps to make pursuing injunctions more difficult, the power of the courts is the strongest tool we have right now to prevent long-lasting damage to institutions of democracy and global public health.
We cannot put our checkbooks ahead of the planet’s ecological balance. Ensuring another species isn’t wiped from the face of the planet should take precedence over devoting the full force of the American economy toward creating another version of the Jeep Grand Cherokee. We need protective government regulations to ensure that large corporations — who are constitutionally obligated to focus on the financial prosperity of their shareholders — don’t do so at the expense of the environment or public health.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Noah Zaldivar at [email protected].
