WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday defended his decision to repeal the legal determination that serves as the basis for federal rules to slow climate change, telling a gathering of climate change skeptics they should \u201ccelebrate vindication.\u201d<\/p>\n
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the remarks in the keynote address at a conference hosted by the Heartland Institute,<\/a> a conservative think tank that rejects mainstream climate science and what it calls \u201cclimate alarmism.\u201d Zeldin told the gathering that repeal of the 2009 \u201cendangerment finding\u201d<\/a> reversed decades of unthinking adherence to liberal politicians and environmental groups about the dangers of climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cToday is a moment to celebrate. It is a day to celebrate vindication,\u2033 said Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who is widely believed to be under consideration for a possible promotion to attorney general, following Pam Bondi\u2019s forced departure<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n The EPA earlier this year revoked the endangerment finding, a scientific conclusion that for 16 years was the central basis for regulating planet-warming emissions<\/a> from power plants, vehicles and other sources. The Trump administration argued the finding hurts industry and the economy and claimed the Obama and Biden administrations twisted science to determine that greenhouse gases are a public health risk.<\/p>\n Heartland on \u2018front lines\u2019 against endangerment finding<\/p>\n Zeldin\u2019s prominent appearance at a conference hosted by a group deeply skeptical of the established science around climate change reflected the vast reversal that President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has carried out of traditional policies meant to protect the environment. The EPA has rolled back dozens of air and water protections<\/a> and has said it does not have legal authority to regulate climate change.<\/p>\n \u201cYou were right there on the front lines against there being an endangerment finding in 2009,\u201d Zeldin told the Heartland conference.<\/p>\n Environmentalists denounced Zeldin\u2019s appearance before the conservative group, accusing him of \u201crallying climate deniers\u201d at a time when climate change is creating greater risks of extreme weather,<\/a> including stronger hurricanes, more dangerous floods and more intense wildfires.<\/p>\n Zeldin\u2019s speech \u201cpromotes disinformation\u201d and amounts to doing the bidding of Heartland\u2019s secretive donors, said Joe Bonfiglio, U.S. director of the Environmental Defense Fund.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Heartland Institute is not a serious scientific organization. It\u2019s a disinformation factory,\u201d Bonfiglio said. Having the EPA administrator serve as their opening act isn\u2019t just embarrassing \u2014 it\u2019s a signal of how completely the Trump administration has abandoned its obligation to protect the public from pollution.\u201d<\/p>\n An EPA spokeswoman brushed off the criticism, saying \u201cthe era of EPA as a vehicle for radical ideology is over.\u201d<\/p>\n Zeldin speaks before a \u201cwide variety of ideologically different groups and individuals to promote the agenda of the Trump EPA,\u201d spokesman Carolyn Holran said.<\/p>\n Zeldin has returned the agency\u2019s focus to fulfill its statutory obligations to protect human health and the environment, \u201cbacked by gold standard science, not doomsday models designed to scare the public into compliance,\u201d she said in an email.<\/p>\n Heartland, based in Illinois, describes itself as a \u201cfree-market think tank\u201d and says a key goal is to \u201cchallenge the narrative that the world faces a climate crisis\u201d driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The organization does not disclose its funder list but has received financial support from oil and gas interests.<\/p>\n James Taylor, the group\u2019s president, hailed Zeldin\u2019s speech and called Zeldin \u201cthe greatest EPA administrator ever.\u201d<\/p>\n The 2009 endangerment finding determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. The Obama-era finding is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations<\/a> under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet. <\/p>\n The repeal eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say. Legal challenges have been filed by nearly two dozen states<\/a>, along with cities and public health and environmental groups. <\/p>\n Critic calls Zeldin speech \u2018surreal\u2019<\/p>\n Bonfiglio, of EDF, called it \u201csurreal\u201d that the head of the EPA would appear before a \u201cfringe of the conservative right\u201d and \u201cask for his flowers.\u201d He called the speech tone-deaf and even insulting to Americans, given the rising costs of gasoline and other energy<\/a> and more frequent occurrences of extreme weather such as a gigantic heat dome that baked the Southwest<\/a> last month and smashed March heat records in 14 states.<\/p>\n The Heartland Institute and its supporters \u201cdon\u2019t want you to look out the window,\u201d Bonfiglio said in an interview. \u201cThey actually need you to not look out the window in order to defend their positions. A core to their belief is that climate change is not a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 The head of the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday defended his decision to repeal the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[8833,28,252158,1687,1685,4253,12,3321,192,793,163164,39915,252157,3131,79,6664,800],"class_list":{"0":"post-572733","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-carolyn-holran","11":"tag-climate","12":"tag-climate-and-environment","13":"tag-climate-change","14":"tag-donald-trump","15":"tag-energy-industry","16":"tag-environment","17":"tag-general-news","18":"tag-industry-regulation","19":"tag-james-taylor","20":"tag-joe-bonfiglio","21":"tag-pam-bondi","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-u-s-environmental-protection-agency","24":"tag-washington-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}