Will E.P.A. Realign with ‘Drill Baby Drill,’ By Removing All Environmental Seat Belts?

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Has there been a profound change of heart about heat, and how not to treat it, high up the ladder in our government? Trump’s new E.P.A. administrator Lee Zeldin seems in sync with his boss’s view that climate change is not a problem.

So, is Zeldin also a fan of drill baby drill and see his priority as doing whatever he can to make buying cars, heating homes and running businesses cheaper, regardless of the costs to something called our environment??

And to accomplish that, might his most consequential act be proposing the agency erase the E.P.A.’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases??

Oh, what exciting times we live in.? Some of us have to crawl through mud, paddle across towns, while others watch the stock market jumping on a trampoline and our government nearly shutting down.

Who’s directing this film?? George Lucas? ?Stanley Kubrick? Steven Spielberg?

Zeldin sounds ready and willing to reconsider or reinterpret decades worth of science showing global warming endangers humanity. ?Moral?? He’s minding how his boss sees a way out, and up!? To an outer space free of regulations.?

Zeldin derisively refers to the legal underpinnings stemming from science as “the holy grail of the climate change religion,” sounding like an Administrator Agnostic.

Zeldin calls recent actions “the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history,” adding “today the green new scam ends, as the E.P.A. does its part to usher in a golden age of American success.”

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The Great Unwinding

And to help bring that about he said the E.P.A. would unwind dozens of protections against air and water pollution.

He promises also to overturn limits on soot from smokestacks even though linked to respiratory problems in humans and premature deaths and end restrictions on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin.

And while he’s at it, he’ll say goodbye to the “good neighbor rule” requiring states to address their own pollution when it’s carried by winds into neighboring states. And E.P.A. would eliminate enforcement efforts prioritizing the protection of poor and minority communities.

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The Costs?

When the agency creates environmental policy, it would no longer consider the costs to society from wildfires, droughts, storms and other disasters that might be made worse by pollution inherently connected to that policy, says Zeldin.

Fortunately for those of us living beside warming pestilential oceans, Zeldin’s announcements do not carry the force of law and E.P.A. would have to undergo a lengthy process of public comment and develop environmental and economic justifications for the changes it proposes.

Meanwhile, Zeldin seems to resonate with President Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, campaigned on a promise to “drill, baby, drill” and ease regulations on fossil fuel companies. ?Just the other day our new energy secretary declared fossil fuels are the future!

Since returning to the White House, while Trump has done many good things, he has also?lowered government’s capability to fight global warming by freezing funds for climate programs authorized by Congress, firing?scientists?working on weather and climate forecasts, and cutting federal support for transitioning away from fossil fuels.? Who knows?? Maybe in the end, it’ll all turn out.? Or be the end.?

A recent article in the NY Times points out that our country is the world’s largest historic emitter of carbon dioxide, a planet-warming greenhouse gas that scientists agree is driving climate change and intensifying hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts, as well as species extinction.

Last year was the hottest in recorded history, and the United States experienced?27 disasters that each cost at least $1 billion, compared to three in 1980, adjusted for inflation.

Democrats and environmental activists decried Zeldin’s moves, accusing him of abandoning the E.P.A.’s responsibility. And what’s the E.P.A.’s responsibility???

Is it not about protecting both human health, and along with it, the environment?

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Tom Madden is an author who when not writing books like his latest, Planetary Lifeguard, Blowing the Whistle on Climate Change, or his weekly blog, MaddenMischief, is helping to make clients of his PR firm, TransMedia Group, more widely known and successful.? While he wants to see President Trump succeed in Making America Great Again, he hopes it can happen with fewer violent storms, especially while he’s living in an oceanfront residence.?