Lee Zeldin, titular head of the Environmental “Protection” Agency, officially announced several efforts to harm Americans’ health, increase their fuel costs by tens of billions of dollars per year, and to ensure that US manufacturing be less competitive into the future.

Zeldin called his actions today, mostly in the form of press releases declaring rollbacks of money-saving and pollution reducing measures, “the greatest day of deregulation in US history.”

Between the Obama and Biden administrations, the US saw significant progress on the environmental front, with federal rules cleaning up air and water pollution from power plants and vehicles, encouraging the onshoring of clean manufacturing, and increasing efficiency thus saving Americans money on energy costs.

All in all, the Biden-Harris administration’s policy improvements would save over $250 billion per year and 200k lives, all while making US industry more prepared for the global green transition that is happening now whether you like it or not.

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However, that’s all bad news for the enemies of America, and so today, one of them started efforts to reverse all of those positive moves.

Unfortunately for America and the world, the current occupier of the White House is convicted felon Donald Trump, who finally received more votes than his opponent on his third attempt (despite committing treason in 2021, for which there is a clear legal remedy).

And, in what is a common trend, his appointee to the position of Chief Saboteur at the Environmental Destruction Agency is one of the worst people possible for the job: Lee Zeldin, a man who has taken $269,608 in lifetime political bribes from the oil industry and, in return for those bribes, says he wants to protect clean air by making the air dirtier.

Today Zeldin put that claim into action… er, well, into more talk… by releasing a swath of unspecific press releases declaring his intent to increase harm and costs for Americans in all sorts of realms.

Most of these press releases focus on the same platitudes and Orwellian doublespeak that we have come to expect from a bought-and-paid oil stooge, claiming that the efforts will reduce costs when they in fact will raise costs, and that they will somehow clean up the environment while they dirty it.

A few specific efforts are pointed out, such as trying to reverse an electric vehicle mandate that doesn’t exist, showing that Zeldin is not just hostile to Americans, but also ignorant of the policy that he’s supposed to be administering. And, flying in the face of science, an effort to remove the EPA’s endangerment finding – a scientific finding which correctly acknowledges the danger of greenhouse gas emissions.

Zeldin also uses some questionable language, such as acknowledging that he’s putting a “dagger straight into the heart” of efforts to lower your costs and rid your life of the poisons that he has been paid to spread.

However, the true effects of these initiatives has not yet been seen, and is even hard to predict given the unspecific nature of the claims made and the long timelines for US rulemaking.

US rulemaking is a long and deliberate process that requires consensus and for rulemaking to have a scientific basis. Rules cannot be “arbitrary and capricious” – which makes it hard for a group of people who embody those terms more than almost anyone on Earth to push anything through.

This is also why Biden’s EPA rules took years to implement and went through many rounds of modification and hundreds of pages of well-considered scientific backing (I read it, and doing so gave me a lot of faith in the way government thinks through things. You should try the same, in a field you have expertise in). And why some rules didn’t make it in under the deadline before the saboteurs took over. In the same way, you can’t just blow everything up overnight – there’s a process involved here.

Further compounding Zeldin’s attempted sabotage of American interests is a recent court opinion overturning the Chevron rule. The effect of this would be that administrative agencies like the EPA have less authority to make changes on their own without going to courts or Congress first, which means that any changes made by Zeldin can potentially be challenged even moreso by the actual environmental protectors of this country – nonprofits like the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and others.

These groups had significant success in challenging moves made by corrupt oil stooge Scott Pruitt and ignorant coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to sabotage American health during Mr. Trump’s first occupation of the White House. The NRDC, for example, won over 90% of the cases they brought during that time frame.

And the groups are all lining up to oppose these harmful actions today.

“The Trump administration’s plans, as announced by executive order, would gut the bedrock national and state clean air standards that have been reducing air pollution and protecting communities across the country. They would also undermine investments, jobs and affordability for clean vehicles. The public has a right to know what the Trump administration is doing and why they are pursuing this harmful agenda. We are going to court to ensure they do.”

-Alice Henderson, Director and Lead Counsel for Transportation and Clean Air, Environmental Defense Fund

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin today announced plans for the greatest increase in pollution in decades. The result will be more toxic chemicals, more cancers, more asthma attacks, and more dangers for pregnant women and their children. Rather than helping our economy, it will create chaos.

-Amanda Leland, Executive Director, Environmental Defense Fund

Donald Trump’s actions will cause thousands of Americans to die each year. It will send thousands of children to the hospital and force even more to miss school. It will pollute the air and water in communities across the country. And it will cause our energy bills to go up even more than they already are because of his disastrous policies. But as they put all of us at risk, Trump and his administration are celebrating because it will help corporate polluters pad their profit margin. 

The American people should be furious. The EPA exists to protect us from serious pollution that endangers our lives and wellbeing, but Trump and Lee Zeldin are attempting to turn it into corporate polluters’ best friend. 

Make no mistake about it: we will fight these outrageous rollbacks tooth and nail, and we will use all resources at our disposal to continue protecting the health and safety of all Americans.

-Ben Jealous, Executive Director, Sierra Club

Breaking faith with the American people and breaking 50 years of laws of the land, the Environmental Protection Agency today abandoned protecting human health and the environment. Repealing or weakening these important safeguards on pollution from cars, power plants, and oil producers would mean higher energy bills, more asthma and heart attacks, more toxins in drinking water, and more extreme weather. 

At a time when millions of Americans are trying to rebuild after horrific wildfires and climate-fueled hurricanes, it’s nonsensical to try to deny that climate change harms our health and welfare. 

Still, today’s announcement is only the start of the process – not the end. Before finalizing any of these actions, the law says EPA must propose its changes, justify them with science and the law, and listen to the public and respond to its concerns. NRDC’s scientists and lawyers will be there to fight back at every step of the way.

Jackie Wong, senior vice president for climate and energy, Natural Resources Defense Council

Finally, it should be noted that, while the US is attempting policy suicide by saddling it’s people with more harm and higher costs, the rest of the world is not doing the same. While the US is actively backing away from clean manufacturing, China and Europe aren’t.

China is producing more clean vehicles, and increasing exports of them every year, and Europe recently saw an opening to “declare independence from the United States” while investing over $100 billion into onshoring clean manufacturing.

Other countries are making the transition and ready to lead the world into the present, while American republicans kick and scream the country into obscurity. This is what a slim plurality of voters wanted, and it’s what you’re getting.

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