There's a lot of hard-to-believe stuff in Trumpworld, but Lee Zeldin's announcement of EPA's new purpose yesterday may top them all (New York Times gift link).
Rather than the rather clear purpose of environmental protection as the name says, Zeldin revised the agency's purpose as follows:
[he] said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
“From the campaign trail to Day 1 and beyond, President Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living,” Mr. Zeldin said. “We at E.P.A. will do our part to power the great American comeback.”
Lowering the cost of something is known to lead people to do more of it. So that means even bigger cars and more of them, driven for more miles, and houses heated and cooled at higher or lower temperatures for longer periods or not made more energy efficient.
And "unleashing energy dominance," of course, means drilling for fossil fuels — not becoming dominant in renewables, because why would we want to do that? How could that possibly be part of the "great American comeback" when Zeldin said believing in climate change is a religion?
Zeldin's pronouncement 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." It would gut agency enforcement overall, give up on the idea of states being responsible for their wind-borne pollution, and do away with the hard-won concept of environmental justice.
The only redeeming portion of the Times story came in this single paragraph:
The announcements do not carry the force of law. In almost every case, the E.P.A. would have to undergo a lengthy process of public comment and develop environmental and economic justifications for the change.
We'll see how much those quaint-sounding practices and standards hold up in the age of Trump.
No comments:
Post a Comment