The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday defended his decision to repeal the legal determination that serves as the basis for federal rules to slow climate change, telling a gathering of climate change skeptics they should “celebrate vindication.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the remarks in the keynote address at a conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that rejects mainstream climate science and what it calls “climate alarmism.” Zeldin told the gathering that repeal of the 2009 “endangerment finding” reversed decades of unthinking adherence to liberal politicians and environmental groups about the dangers of climate change.
“Today is a moment to celebrate. It is a day to celebrate vindication,” said Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who is widely believed to be under consideration for a possible promotion to attorney general, following Pam Bondi’s forced departure last week.
The EPA earlier this year revoked the endangerment finding, a scientific conclusion that for 16 years was the central basis for regulating planet-warming emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources. The Trump administration argued the finding hurts industry and the economy and claimed the Obama and Biden administrations twisted science to determine that greenhouse gases are a public health risk.
Zeldin’s prominent appearance at a conference hosted by a group deeply skeptical of the established science around climate change reflected the vast reversal that President Donald Trump’s administration has carried out of traditional policies meant to protect the environment. The EPA has rolled back dozens of air and water protections and has said it does not have legal authority to regulate climate change.
“You were right there on the front lines against there being an endangerment finding in 2009,” Zeldin told the Heartland conference.
Environmentalists denounced Zeldin’s appearance before the conservative group, accusing him of “rallying climate deniers” at a time when climate change is creating greater risks of extreme weather, including stronger hurricanes, more dangerous floods and more intense wildfires.
Zeldin’s speech “promotes disinformation” and amounts to doing the bidding of Heartland’s secretive donors, said Joe Bonfiglio, U.S. director of the Environmental Defense Fund.
“The Heartland Institute is not a serious scientific organization. It’s a disinformation factory,” Bonfiglio said. Having the EPA administrator serve as their opening act isn’t just embarrassing — it’s a signal of how completely the Trump administration has abandoned its obligation to protect the public from pollution.”
An EPA spokeswoman brushed off the criticism, saying “the era of EPA as a vehicle for radical ideology is over.”
Zeldin speaks before a “wide variety of ideologically different groups and individuals to promote the agenda of the Trump EPA,” spokesman Carolyn Holran said.
Zeldin has returned the agency’s focus to fulfill its statutory obligations to protect human health and the environment, “backed by gold standard science, not doomsday models designed to scare the public into compliance,” she said in an email.
Heartland, based in Illinois, describes itself as a “free-market think tank” and says a key goal is to “challenge the narrative that the world faces a climate crisis” driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The organization does not disclose its funder list but has received financial support from oil and gas interests.
James Taylor, the group’s president, hailed Zeldin’s speech and called Zeldin “the greatest EPA administrator ever.”
The 2009 endangerment finding determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. The Obama-era finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.
The repeal eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say. Legal challenges have been filed by nearly two dozen states, along with cities and public health and environmental groups.
Bonfiglio, of EDF, called it “surreal” that the head of the EPA would appear before a “fringe of the conservative right” and “ask for his flowers.” He called the speech tone-deaf and even insulting to Americans, given the rising costs of gasoline and other energy and more frequent occurrences of extreme weather such as a gigantic heat dome that baked the Southwest last month and smashed March heat records in 14 states.
The Heartland Institute and its supporters “don’t want you to look out the window,” Bonfiglio said in an interview. “They actually need you to not look out the window in order to defend their positions. A core to their belief is that climate change is not a threat.”
