While the country is focused on President-elect Donald Trump's most controversial cabinet picks, such as Kash Patel for FBI director or Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, the fossil fuel industry is surely celebrating a pick that has mostly flown under the radar. Trump has chosen Lee Zeldin to lead the EPA, and the former New York Republican lawmaker is poised to reverse the clock on climate progress and hand America's environment over to its most notorious polluters.
Zeldin isn't a household name, but he's known in New York, where he ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2022. As a member of Congress, Zeldin was awarded something called the “Oil Slick Award” by a nonprofit environmental group called Environmental Advocates in 2011. He had a lifetime environmental voting record of 14 percent with the League of Conservation Voters. Zeldin voted to overturn the 2020 election and sat in Trump's VIP box at the Republican National Convention.
Zeldin is currently chair of the China Policy Initiative and the Pathway to 2025 program at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative, pro-Trump think tank. The organization, which was co-founded by billionaire Trump donor and oil executive Tim Dunn, aims to increase fossil fuel production and reduce fossil fuel regulations.
It's safe to say Zeldin is no friend of the environment and a close friend of Donald Trump. As administrator of the EPA, environmental experts say he could oversee the repeal of countless environmental regulations and help facilitate pumping billions of tons of noxious greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Judith Enck, a visiting faculty member at Bennington College and a former regional administrator of the EPA in the New York area, tells Rolling Stone that Zeldin will likely be fulfilling the fossil fuel industry's wish list as head of the EPA.
“If you are a fossil fuel company, a plastics company, a chemical company — you've got to be pretty happy with this appointment, but it's going to be an environmental disaster for the rest of us,” Enck says. “He is a loyal devotee of Donald Trump, and he'll do whatever anti-environmental policy Trump tells him to do.”
Enck says much of what Zeldin will be charged with doing at the EPA can be found in Project 2025. The 900-page blueprint for Trump's term, compiled by the Heritage Foundation, includes around 150 pages that relate to energy and the environment. It outlines how the Trump administration could weaken the Clean Air Act, expand oil and gas drilling, hobble climate research, allow more pollution of waterways, and more.
“They want to weaken Clean Air Act regulations by removing the part of the law that requires the EPA to set health-based air quality standards. That's a very unique provision in federal law that the standards have to be based on protecting human health,” Enck says. “It's been so effective over the years in reducing air pollution and all of the respiratory and cardiac disease that goes along with air pollution.”
Basil Smikle, a political strategist and policy advisor, says he expects the Trump administration to engage in “rampant deregulation,” including in the environmental sphere.
“If it's good for corporate interests, I think that's ultimately what's going to drive a lot of the policy,” Smikle says.
Trump was highly focused on rolling back regulations during his first term, and he'll be doing much of the same the second time around. He rolled back over 100 environmental regulations during his presidency, and allowed the fossil fuel industry to increase not just carbon emissions but mercury and methane emissions.
“We should expect Zeldin to aggressively pursue Trump's agenda,” says Jennifer Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project. “I think it's going to be even worse than it was during the first Trump administration, given the campaign pledges and the fact that Trump is more prepared.”
During the 2024 campaign, Trump said he'd be a dictator on day one so he could “drill, drill, drill.” He also said he would get rid of President Biden's signature climate policies in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Duggan says no environmental policy is safe, and she also expects the administration to crack down on climate research. The world doesn't have an infinite amount of time to win the fight against climate change, and Duggan says a significant amount of the progress that's been made in that fight will be reversed.
“I think any loss in momentum is incredibly serious for the future of our climate, and there's no doubt there will be some loss of momentum,” Duggan says.
Climate change isn't some abstract concept that resides in the future. It is already causing more extreme weather and threatening communities around the globe. Enck says Trump's EPA will make matters worse.
“The climate crisis is here. There are forest fires in New Jersey and New York that used to just be in wilderness areas out west,” Enck says. “There's major flooding. There are stronger hurricanes. We are seeing fatalities from climate change that we've never seen before all over the world.”
Even if the US completely stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the world would still be facing a difficult climate future, and the Trump administration intends to increase emissions over the next four years. This will make the fight against climate change significantly more difficult.
“We are at a very critical juncture where the magnitude and the severity of the climate impacts keeps increasing (think of the 1,000 year flood in North Carolina), yet we continue to bury our heads in the sand and prioritize short-term comfort over long -term survival,” says Robyn Wilson, a professor of risk analysis and decision science at Ohio State University. “This will slow us down immensely.”
Dirtier air, dirtier water, poorer public health, and a more dangerous climate — this is what environmental and climate experts predict the Trump administration has in store for the nation. What remains to be seen is how much the judiciary and Democrats in Congress will pose as a bullwark against that future.
When Trump was campaigning for president, he told the fossil fuel industry he'd basically do whatever they want if they gave his campaign $1 billion. Well, that investment looks like it's going to pay off, and it seemingly paid for the elevation of figures like Lee Zeldin. He may not be a bombastic attention-seeker like some of his counterparts, but he will unquestionably leave his mark on the country and the world.
