What Trump’s pick of Zeldin to lead EPA signals for his environmental plans

As President-elect Trump’s team is taking shape, we’re learning more about who will take the lead on energy, climate and the environment. The first announcement on that front is Lee Zeldin, a former GOP congressman who will head the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump has called climate change a “scam” and says addressing it hurts business. William Brangham discussed more with Coral Davenport.
Amna Nawaz:
As we reported, president-elect Trump’s new team will include a former Republican congressman to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
William Brangham takes a closer look at the stakes for energy, environment and the climate.
William Brangham:
Amna, now that nominee is former representative Lee Zeldin of Long Island New York, and he has long been a staunch Trump ally.
Trump has called climate change a scam and has argued that addressing it hurts American business and consumers. This, of course, comes as scientists say that 2024 will likely be the hottest year in recorded history.
To understand what this means for the country and for the climate, we are joined again by Coral Davenport of The New York Times.
Coral, so nice to see you again.
Zeldin was, I think, as your reporting showed, a somewhat unusual pick. He’s not someone that has shown a lot of interest or expertise in the climate, but one of the major initiatives we know he will likely undertake is what Donald Trump has said all along, that he wants to undo Biden’s signature environmental law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which plowed hundreds of billions of dollars into this green energy transition.
If Trump has the Senate and likely the House, how likely is it that Lee Zeldin and Trump will be able to undo that act?
Coral Davenport, The New York Times:
So it’s interesting.
President-elect Trump has been really clear. He wants to undo or repeal the IRA, as you said, Biden’s signature climate law, historic climate law. But that’s not something that can be done with executive authority. The president can’t just say, make the law go away. He will need both chambers of Congress.
And even then, even with the Republican majority in both chambers of Congress, it’s not entirely certain that that will happen. Remember, with the Republican efforts to undo Obamacare, that was the health care law, in the first Trump administration, they had both chambers of Congress, tried again and again to repeal it and did not have the votes.
William Brangham:
The famous John McCain thumbs-down moment.
Coral Davenport:
Exactly.
And in this case, one thing that’s really interesting about the IRA is so much of that clean green energy money is by design 80 percent going into Republican districts. So a lot of that money is flowing into clean energy factories in Republican districts. Those factories are being built, have been built. They’re already creating jobs.
And so it’s not at all certain that there will be a Republican majority to take that money away. It will be very interesting to see. That political kind of resilience is built in to the structure of the law. And so it’ll be really interesting to see the contrast between the money going into districts and the loyalty to Trump and how that plays out in the fate of that law.
William Brangham:
Green money into red districts.
Coral Davenport:
Exactly.
William Brangham:
There are other plans, obviously, to get out of the Paris climate agreement, to eliminate any so-called environmental justice initiatives, to perhaps even move the EPA out of Washington, D.C.
Are there any things that the Biden administration can do before it gets out of office to sort of solidify its environmental legacy before Trump comes in?
Coral Davenport:
So, the Biden administration was pretty clear-eyed about the possibility that this would happen, that there would be a second Trump administration.
And so they have been working for the past couple of years to try to legally shore up their climate — their climate protections. One thing they did is, in all these climate regulations that they put in place, they put back the old ones and they made them stronger again.
A big regulation designed to compel Americans into electric vehicles, very controversial. Trump has been very clear about wanting to get rid of that one.
William Brangham:
Very clear.
Coral Davenport:
Other regulations, again, on shutting down coal plants, on eliminating pollution from oil and gas drilling, they have worked incredibly hard on legally bulletproofing those regulations.
And we have an early sign that some of that has been effective. One example, one of those big regulations designed to shut down coal-fired power plants, there was a legal request to put a pause on that. There’s already litigation against it.
The Supreme Court denied that request. So the ultimate arbiter of that will be a Supreme Court that has a conservative supermajority, including justices appointed by former President Trump. So it’s not a sure thing, but that’s kind of — certainly within the Biden administration they were trying to prepare.
William Brangham:
Trump’s election also comes at this critical moment. The U.N.’s annual climate summit is happening in Azerbaijan right now.
We also know there’s this belief that major emitters around the world have to cut their pollution by 50 percent compared to 20 years ago. Trump’s election seems to upend America’s commitment to all of that. I mean, just what are the global stakes here?
Coral Davenport:
President-elect Trump has been crystal clear that he will do exactly what he did in his first term, which is withdraw the United States from the global Paris accord.
He did that his first term. President Biden put the U.S. back in. Trump is going to pull back out. This time, however, it seems likely that Trump will not just pull the U.S. out from the agreement, the accord, but from the underlying United Nations legal structure for that entire accord, which would make it a lot more difficult for the U.S. to ever rejoin.
It would be a much more permanent step. And the message that sends to the rest of the world is very much the days of thinking that the U.S. will ever be a reliable partner on addressing global warming are over.
I don’t — the U.S. will never have credibility in this space again. And, as you say, it’s coming at a crucial moment. Scientists say there’s about five years left. By 2030, the major economies have to cut their emissions in half. The U.S. will not meet that target.
William Brangham:
Coral Davenport of The New York Times, thank you so much.
Coral Davenport:
Always great to be here.