The article on the front page of The New York Times this week began: "Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said on Tuesday that the Trump administration would revoke the scientific determination that underpins the government's legal authority to combat climate change."
"Speaking at a truck dealership in Indianapolis, Mr. Zeldin said the E.P.A. planned to rescind the 2009 declaration, known as the endangerment finding, which concluded that planet-warming greenhouse gases poses a threat to public health," The Times piece continued.
It quoted Zeldin, the hand-picked appointment of President Donald Trump to be administrator of the agency, saying: "The proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest regulatory action in the history of the United States."
Reuters, in its coverage, said Zeldin announced a move that it said"will rescind the long-standing finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, removing the legal foundation for all U.S. greenhouse gas regulations."
Reuters said "if finalized, the repeal would end current limits on greenhouse gas pollution from vehicle tailpipes, power plants, smokestacks and other sources, and hamper future U.S. efforts to combat global warming."
The move was anticipated.
As an article in March in Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, the largest environmental organization in the U.S., reportedd: "The Trump administration has announced its first step toward trying to revoke one of the most consequential legal standards in the United States for acting on planet-heating fossil fuel emissions. Sixteen years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its landmark 'endangerment finding' that greenhouse gases heating up the planet threaten public health and welfare. Two years earlier, the Supreme Court paved the way for that finding with a determination that the EPA has the authority to limit the emissions of those gases through federal regulation."
"Now," it said, "the EPA, under Donald Trump, is trying to undo its own authority to take that action."
Zeldin "is ready to lead" a "far more radical retreat on climate change" than made during Trump's first term as president, it said.
Zeldin in March had just announced, the piece noted, that the EPA "will undertake a 'formal reconsideration' of its 2009 endangerment finding, which underpins the agency's legal obligation to regulate carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA also announced that it intends to undo all of its prior rules that flow from that finding, including limits on emissions from automobiles and power plants alongside scores of other rules pertaining to air and water pollution."
Zeldin had declared in that announcement: "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion."
"Climate advocates reacted with outrage," the Sierra piece by Dana Drugmand went on. It quoted Joanne Spalding, legal director at the Sierra Club, saying: "Instead of protecting communities reeling from the havoc caused by climate disasters, Trump and Zeldin seek to shatter the foundation that undergirds our climate safeguards. Sierra Club has been expecting and preparing for this unlawful action, and we will use every legal means available to challenge it."
That pronouncement by Zeldin on repealing the "endangerment finding" was also focus of a New Yorker magazine article by Bill McKibben, a leader in challenging climate change. He wrote "the reversal of the long-standing federal position" as Zeldin "recommended".would be truly and deeply disgraceful-- not just climate denial but basic-science denial"true '1984' stuff"equivalent of 'War is peace' and 'Freedom is slavery.'" It would be "an explicit repudiation" of the understanding of "the role of carbon in our atmosphere."
Further, McKibben wrote, the move is "entirely predictable" as Trump "has said that climate change is a 'hoax' and a 'scam.' So Zeldin could have been in little doubt about what he was supposed to do."
What has been anticipated has happened-- and is happening.
As a journalist based on eastern Long Island, living in a Congressional district previously represented by Zeldin in the House of Representatives, I have known and reported on Zeldin for many years. The environment was never a major concern of his. He is a resident of Shirley, a community in central Long Island named Shirley for Walter T. Shirley, the real estate man who developed it.
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