In a barrage of pronouncements on Wednesday the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.
But beyond that, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reframed the purpose of the E.P.A. In a two-minute-and-18-second video posted to X, Zeldin boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970.
The E.P.A. has “no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment,” the first administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus, said as he explained its mission to the country weeks after the E.P.A. was created by President Richard M. Nixon. He said the agency would be focused on research, standards and enforcement in five areas: air pollution, water pollution, waste disposal, radiation and pesticides.
The E.P.A.’s proposed changes
Perhaps the most significant of the agency’s regulatory changes is an effort to revise a 2009 legal opinion known as the E.P.A. “endangerment finding,” which concluded that rising greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health.
The finding gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Eliminating it would make it virtually impossible for the E.P.A. to curb climate pollution from automobiles, factories, power plants or oil and gas wells.
Some of the other significant policy changes Zeldin said he planned include:
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Rolling back restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Currently the E.P.A. requires existing coal-burning power plants and new gas plants built in the United States to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 90 percent by 2039.
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Rewriting tailpipe pollution standards that were designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
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Easing limits on mercury emissions from power plants, as well as restrictions on soot and haze from burning coal. A Biden-era rule had aimed to slash by 70 percent emissions from coal-burning power plants of mercury, which has been linked to developmental damage in children.
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Greatly reducing the “social cost” of carbon, an economic estimate of the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That figure plays a significant role in weighing the costs and benefits of regulating industries.
Read more E.P.A. coverage:
The issue at hand: Should companies be held responsible if birds are killed accidentally, for example in oil spills or waste pits?
The answer has ping-ponged back and forth in recent years under different interpretations of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, one of the nation’s oldest environmental laws.
Now, as part of a sweeping suspension of legal opinions made by the Interior Department under President Biden, the Trump administration is again prioritizing energy companies and other industries that do not want to be penalized when birds die accidentally because of their actions. — Catrin Einhorn and Lisa Friedman
More climate news:
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Road construction is cutting through tens of thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest ahead of the United Nations climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém, BBC reports.
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The Washington Post explores how microplastics could be hurting our food supply.
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Reuters reports that a judge pressed the E.P.A. for evidence of fraud, waste and abuse in $20 billion climate funding program that the agency is trying to claw back.
Correction: The Tuesday newsletter misstated the size of the grant that Landforce, a nonprofit group, received from the E.P.A based on information from the agency’s website. It was awarded $15 million, not $14 million
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