Do you know anyone who voted for Trump in 2024 because they were hoping for more pollution? Probably not. Predictably, though, Drill-Baby-Drill-Donald’s EPA Administrator just cancelled all kinds of regulations meant to protect clean air, clean water, and regulations meant to lessen the likelihood of damage from climate change.
On March 12 Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protetion Agency, Lee Zeldin, announced that the E.P.A. would “unwind more than two dozen protections against air and water pollution. It would overturn limits on soot from smokestacks that have been linked to respiratory problems in humans and premature deaths as well as restrictions on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin. It would get rid of the “good neighbor rule” that requires states to address their own pollution when it’s carried by winds into neighboring states. And it would eliminate enforcement efforts that prioritize the protection of poor and minority communities.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/climate/epa-zeldin-rollbacks-pollution.html
“In addition, 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 connected to that policy, Mr. Zeldin said.”
On Here and Now, Mar. 14th, we heard from a former Regional EPA official that we had better get used to more soot, particulates like sulfur dioxide, with more asthma attacks, more methane, dirtier water, and more heart disease. Not to mention giving up on ameliorating climate change with its greater storms, wildfires, sea level rises, and more. When Trump said climate change was a hoax, he meant it is not a real phenomenon that requires any sort of government action to prevent or ameliorate its effects.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/03/14/epa-deregulation-trump
It’s an ostrich-like, hand in the sand, knee-jerk reaction, seemingly to “stick it to the libs” but justified (strangely) as “economic development.”
WBUR’s Here and Now podcast noted that “Zeldin also framed the deregulation as a way to “unleash American energy” and restore jobs in sectors like the automotive industry. Additionally, he portrayed the move as part of a broader effort to redefine the EPA’s role, shifting away from environmental protection and towards economic development.”
In a two-minute-and-18-second video posted to X, Mr. Zeldin boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
Lower the cost of buying a car? Maybe the EPA should intervene to end Trump’s tariffs on auto parts from Canada. If the Administration wanted to protect the auto industry in the U.S. it would not have started a trade war with Canada and Mexico. As the executive editor of Automotive News wrote in the New York Times, Trump’s tariffs are driving automakers crazy. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/opinion/cars-gm-ford-trump-tariffs.html
But no. The role of the EPA is to protect the environment; the government already has several agencies that promote economic development: the US Economic Development Administration, the US Trade and Development Agency, the US Department of Agriculture, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Commerce.
Under the law, Trump and Zeldin can refuse to enforce the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and only Congress and the courts can hold them accountable, so for now, so it’s “perfectly legal.” But it’s also a deadly corruption of the process whereby Congress and the President create laws and depend on regulators that actually care about the public good.