The News
The Trump administration said it would repeal scores of environmental regulations, including back rules on greenhouse gases, limiting vehicle pollution, the fossil fuel industry, and water.
The sweeping changes reflected a startling shift underway at the US Environmental Protection Agency from its long-time mission of environmental protection and safeguarding public health, toward a purpose that new agency chief Lee Zeldin said would aim to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” Zeldin said Wednesday, adding that “we are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate-change religion.”
SIGNALS
Trump’s plans to unleash US energy industry may backfire
New EPA head Lee Zeldin’s stated hope for “America’s Golden Age” of energy reflected one of Trump’s key campaign pledges: To reduce fossil fuel regulations and, in his words, to “drill baby, drill.” But the practicalities remain a challenge. While the Trump administration has sought to withhold federal funding for already-approved clean energy projects, the US renewable energy sector is on track for “record” growth this year, NPR wrote. “The idea that we’d be constraining the build of new energy [infrastructure] really feels like it’s rowing in the wrong direction,” said the CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association trade group that has members including Amazon and ExxonMobil. And the broad repeal of climate-friendly energy policies could mean a net loss of almost four million jobs by 2030, one climate think tank said.
Environmental rule rollbacks will be difficult to pass
At the heart of the repeal actions is a 2009 finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that emissions endanger public health and thus can be regulated under the 1970 Clean Air Act. Reversing this ruling has long been considered the white whale of climate change deniers, and Trump reportedly asked Zeldin to find a way to rework or scrap it, E&E News wrote. But it’s unclear whether the repeals will be successful, a legal expert told The New York Times, as its policies are based on decades of precedent that clearly demonstrates the negative consequences of climate change. The effort to unwind the endangerment finding, for example, would be “a good way to waste years of time and effort and accomplish nothing,” he said.