President-elect Donald Trump has tapped former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) to serve as the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
Once confirmed, he’ll have a big job ahead of him — starting with undoing four years of damage by the Biden EPA.
The agency has now finalized a long list of rules that jeopardize the well-being of Americans and ignore the will of Congress. Here are three Zeldin should repeal immediately:
The de facto electric vehicle mandate. This is an attempt by the agency to kill off gas-powered cars and push Americans to buy EVs.
Per the EPA, the rule will result in EVs accounting for about 70% of all new car sales by 2032. Consumer freedom? That apparently doesn’t matter to the Biden EPA.
Never mind, also, all the problems with EVs compared to gas-powered cars, including higher prices and reliability issues. That’s just a pill Americans will have to swallow if this rule survives.
Indeed, the EPA apparently didn’t even care that Congress hadn’t authorized the rule.
Yet if lawmakers wanted to take the unprecedented step of dictating what kind of cars Americans drive, they would’ve spoken up clearly.
Actually, in effect, they did — by remaining silent.
The power plant rule, also known as the Clean Power Plan 2.0.
Its predecessor, the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, was shot down by the Supreme Court in the 2021 case West Virginia v. EPA.
Like with the Clean Power Plan, the EPA once again tried to play the role of national electric-grid manager, trying to shift electric generation from reliable sources like coal and natural gas to unreliable ones like wind and solar.
To that end, it imposed infeasible technological requirements to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants that will effectively kill off coal and discourage new natural-gas plants.
PJM Interconnection, which manages the grid for over 65 million people, warned, “The future demand for electricity cannot be met simply through renewables given their intermittent nature.
“Yet in the very years when we are projecting significant increases in the demand for electricity, the [EPA’s rule] may work to drive premature retirement of coal units that provide essential reliability services and dissuade new gas resources from coming online.”
Americans have rightfully come to expect that when they flick on the switch, the light will come on. That expectation may be dashed if this rule survives.
And that’s wholly unacceptable in any developed nation, let alone one as prosperous as the United States.
Particulate matter standards. The Biden EPA showed a disdain for science and a rush to regulate when it finalized new stringent standards for fine particulate matter.
Every five years, the EPA is required to review and, if appropriate, revise the standards for six major pollutants, including fine particulate matter.
At the end of 2020, after a long process, the Trump EPA retained the existing standards based in part on the advice of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee.
What happened next is shocking.
In early 2021, at the start of President Biden’s tenure, EPA boss Michael Regan dismissed all of the advisers from CASAC and another legally required panel, the Science Advisory Board.
The political massacre prompted SAB head John Graham to say: “For the first time in the agency’s 50-year history, we have an administrator interested in scientific advice only from those scientists he has personally appointed.”
Then, in June of that year, the EPA reconsidered Team Trump’s decision to retain the standards. And just this past February, it finalized stricter standards.
That is, instead of following the usual five-year process and respecting the agency’s 2020 analysis, the Biden folks prematurely set new, tougher standards.
Zeldin should make it a priority to get rid of these three rules, as well as other harmful ones.
He must also ensure the agency has a strong legal foundation for its actions, unlike Team Biden.
Zeldin needs to advance an agenda to protect the environment while respecting the rule of law, appreciating the costs and tradeoffs of regulations and valuing scientific integrity.
It would be a welcome change.
Daren Bakst is director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment.