It looks like the next EPA head will likely be Lee Zeldin, a former New York Congressman and failed gubernatorial candidate, and he’s already promising policy moves that would make the air dirtier and increase health and fuel costs for Americans.

The nominee doesn’t have a particularly extensive environmental background, without a lot of specific advocacy on environmental topics.

As a result, various environmental protection organizations have released statements pointing out his poor record on environmental legislation in the past and expressing concern at his likely destructive rollbacks to come. In 2020, while he was in Congress, he received the worst environmental score out of the entire New York congressional delegation.

Estimations of the likelihood of these destructive actions can be informed by the period between 2017-2021, which was marked by severe corruption by two EPA heads with deep ties to the oil & gas and coal industries.

The first of those EPA heads, Scott Pruitt, gained prominence by suing the EPA to stop clean air, and in his tenure ended up being so corrupt that he was forced to resign – quite a feat given that administration’s over 3,700 conflicts of interest.

The second, Andrew Wheeler, was a coal lobbyist who tried to orchestrate a $70 billion bailout for the coal industry and showed incredible ignorance and mendacity when discussing the state of his own agency’s regulations.

What we do know about Zeldin’s plans were announced this morning, when he noted to the media that he wants to pull back on the EPA regulations of the last four years.

While we don’t know what specific regulations he intends to target, it is likely that there would be sweeping and/or scattershot actions to reduce the progress of the last four years. Regulations implemented by the EPA under President Biden will save Americans $250B/year in health and energy costs and save 200k lives in total.

Rolling back those regulations, as Zeldin has said he wants to do, would cost Americans money in the form of higher health and fuel costs, and would cause more death.

The reason these rollbacks would cause more death and higher costs is because they would increase air pollution, which is a major driver of death and disease and a major drain on economic productivity. The rollbacks would also increase costs because the targeted regulations are focused on efficiency, and reducing efficiency means higher energy costs for the nation in total.

We also know that Zeldin has received a similar amount of money from the oil & gas industry as Trump’s first corrupt EPA pick. Zeldin has received $269,608 in lifetime political bribes from the Oil & Gas industry – not his largest chunk of donations when sorted by industry, but still significant. This is similar to the pricetag on corrupt oil & gas stooge Scott Pruitt, who earned around $300k in bribes from oil & gas for his work to advance dirty air prior to his appointment as chief saboteur of the EPA.

In exchange for these relatively low pricetags, the richest and most destructive industry in the history of the world – which receives over $700 billion in subsidies yearly in the US alone – received significant boosts from destructive actions at the agency that is tasked with keeping the air you breathe clean.

Alongside his statements today, Zeldin also said that will make these rollbacks “while protecting access to clean air and water,” but it remains to be seen how that is possible. Given that the specific policy actions he has already suggested are incredibly destructive to clean air, this particular quote rings as if it may be untrue. He also said something about artificial intelligence, which it’s unclear what the EPA has anything to do with (unless he was referring to doing something about the massive unnecessary energy use from the sector, but that seems unlikely).

Zeldin said that he wants to ensure US “energy dominance,” which is unlikely to happen with any strategy that focuses away from the technologies of the future. The EPA’s actions of the last four years, and President Biden’s actions as a whole, have all coalesced around a strategy of bringing EV and battery manufacturing to the US so that the US can be ready to provide the products of the future.

Mr. Trump, in contrast, is already seeking to roll back the policies that have successfully led to hundreds of billions in investment and hundreds of thousands of jobs in green industry, despite him being ignorant of what those policies are in the first place.

While in Congress, Zeldin voted against the Inflation Reduction Act, the bill that brought those jobs and billions in investment to the US. But in yet another piece of Orwellian doublespeak, Zeldin said today that he wants to “bring back American jobs to the auto industry,” despite it being clear that he and Mr. Trump both want to roll back policies that have brought back American jobs to the auto industry.

All that said, Zeldin also was a member of a bipartisan “climate solutions caucus” in 2016, and voted against a republican amendment to slash EPA funding in 2020. So it’s not all bad, it’s just 86% bad.

And there is one more silver lining here. Earlier this year, the “Supreme” Court stupidly opined that government agencies should be restrained in their ability to do their jobs when it eliminated something called the Chevron doctrine.

You can read more about that here, but in short, the opinion would make it harder for EPA to change regulations going forward. So Zeldin might have his work cut out for him, as he will likely have to fight against the scientists at his own agency and the courts to implement the dirty-air policies that he has already indicated he wants to implement.

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Following Donald Trump’s US election win, the UK has stepped into a leadership role at COP29, and it’s just announced a more ambitious climate goal.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband told the Observer that the UK will work on securing vital alliances with other countries at the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, following climate change denier Trump’s victory:

The only way to keep the British people secure today is by making Britain a clean-energy superpower, and the only way we protect future generations is by working with other countries to deliver climate action.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, one of only seven G20 leaders attending the summit, said at a press conference:

At this COP, I was pleased to announce that we’re building on our reputation as a climate leader, with the UK’s 2035 NDC [nationally determined contributions] target to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% on 1990 levels.

The UK’s new goal is in line with a recommendation from the UK’s independent climate change committee, which said in October that the target should exceed the current 78% cut to emissions, measured against 1990 levels that were set by the previous government.

The UK is one of the first countries to announce an NDC, which isn’t due until February 2025.

The Guardian, which first broke the news from Baku, reports that “the goal would be achieved by decarbonizing the power sector and through a massive expansion of offshore wind, as well as through investments in carbon capture and storage and nuclear energy.”

Climate finance is the major focus of this year’s talks, and the prime minister also said the UK would fulfill a pledge made by the Conservatives of £11.6 billion in climate finance to poor countries. Further, Starmer announced a £1 billion investment in a wind turbine project that’s expected to create 1,300 local jobs in Hull, in the north of England.

Since Labour took office in July, it’s scrapped the ban on onshore wind, committed to no new North Sea oil and gas licenses, and become the first G7 economy to phase out coal power when it closed the UK’s last coal power plant at the end of September.

UK greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by almost half from 1990 levels, mainly due to the phaseout of coal from electricity generation.

Read more: The UK officially closes its last remaining coal power plant

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Rivian (RIVN) and Volkswagen, an upcoming EV startup and one of the world’s largest automakers, are teaming up to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles.

In June, we learned Volkswagen would invest up to $5 billion to form a new joint venture with Rivian.

VW CEO, Oliver Blume, said the partnership is designed to “bring the best solutions to our vehicles faster and at a lower cost.” The legacy automaker will use Rivian’s software expertise to create a new EV archetecture for next-gen software defined vehicles (SDVs).

On Tuesday, Rivian and VW officially entered into an agreement to create their new joint venture, “Rivian and VW Group Technology, LLC.”

The total deal size is up to $5.8 billion and is expected to start on November 13, 2024. Through the new partnership, Rivian and VW plan to bring a next-gen EV architecture and best-in-class software to both companies future EV models.”

Blume said, “Today’s launch of the joint venture demonstrates the potential we want to leverage together in the coming years.”

Rivian and VW finalize joint venture EV partnership

New models will cover all “relevant vehicle segments,” including subcompact cars.” The new JV will be led by Rivian’s chief software engineer, Wassym Bensaid, and VW Group’s Carsten Helbing.

The teams will initially be based on Palo Alto, California, with three additional sites coming in North America and Europe.

By combining Rivian’s software expertise and VW’s massive global scale, the JV plans to cut development costs and accelerate the scale of new tech.

Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said today’s announcement “marks an important step forward in helping transition the world to electric vehicle.” He added the company is “thrilled to see our technology being integrated in vehicles outside of Rivian.”

The JV plans to use the existing Rivian electrical architecture and software stack, enabling the launch of Rivian’s more affordable R2 in the first half of 2026. It will also be used to support the launch of the first Volkswagen EV from the JV as early as 2027.

Rivian and VW will scale the new tech across a wide range of price points and global markets, “paving the way for new generations of high-volume vehicles that are fully capable of advanced automated driving functions.”

Teams from both companies have already “successfully demonstrated the potential of their collaboration,” developing a drivable demo vehicle in just 12 weeks.

Volkswagen plans to invest up to $5.8 billion in Rivian and the new JV by 2027. A $1 billion investment in the form of a a convertible note has already been issued. At close, VW will invest roughly $1.3 billion for background IP licenses and a 50% stake in the JV. The remaining up to $3.5 billion will come in “the form of equity, convertible notes, and debt at future dates,” and will be based on performance targets.

Rivian’s stock price is up nearly 6% following the news in Tuesday’s after hours trading session. However, share prices are still down nearly 50% in 2024 and over 90% from their all-time high set in November 2021.