Head of EPA praises conservative group for opposing government action on climate change

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin delivered the keynote speech at a Wednesday meeting of the Heartland Institute, a group that challenges the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change’s harmful impacts and the need to curb greenhouse gas emissions that cause it.

Zeldin — who is also seen as a candidate to be President Donald Trump’s next attorney general — praised the conservative group for its work in the 2000s to question the predicted impacts of climate change and oppose government action on climate change.

“It’s controversial that we won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end,” Zeldin said at the group’s 16th International Conference on Climate Change in Washington. “Today, all of you gathered here in D.C. is a moment to celebrate. It is a day to celebrate vindication.”

Zeldin told the gathering at the Hotel Washington that the agency was doing its part to implement Trump’s agenda, highlighting the February repeal of the EPA’s most critical policy for combating climate change, known as the “endangerment finding.” That repeal simultaneously eliminated any EPA curbs on greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

Joanna Slaney, vice president of political and government affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group, criticized Zeldin and the group for denying the reality of climate change when its toll is so apparent.

“Lee Zeldin is executing on the playbook of denial written by the Heartland Institute,” Slaney said. “The costs of climate change are piling up like the debris after a disaster. Energy prices and insurance premiums are soaring. People’s health and safety are suffering.”

“Denial isn’t making weather less extreme. It’s not bringing the costs of health care, electricity and insurance down. It’s not making anyone safer,” she added.

The advocacy group’s affiliate, EDF Action, put up posters outside the event to protest the speech, with images of smokestacks and forest fires.

The Heartland Institute has long campaigned for rescinding the endangerment finding, with some conservatives affiliated with the group criticizing the first Trump administration for not seeking to roll it back.

“Unlike the first term, President Trump now has people like Administrator Zeldin who are actually energetic promoters of the President’s program,” said Myron Ebell, who led Trump’s EPA transition team going into the first term and is a frequent speaker at the Heartland Institute’s annual conference.

“I give Zeldin a lot of credit for the energy and the ambition he’s brought to the job. But ultimately, it all comes from the president,” Ebell said. “He is really pushing the deregulatory agenda because he understands what it can do to rebuild the American economy and spur growth.”

Trump has privately discussed possibly nominating Zeldin to replace former attorney general Pam Bondi, a person familiar with the matter told The Washington Post last week.

That would put Zeldin in a position of overseeing the Justice Department lawyers defending repeal of dozens of environmental regulations he oversaw at EPA, including those on power plant greenhouse gas and mercury emissions and other deadly air pollution. At EPA, he has pursued an aggressive strategy to quickly repeal the rules with an aim of receiving final rulings from the Supreme Court before the end of the Trump term.

Zeldin agreed to speak at Heartland weeks before Bondi was ousted last week.

Historically, EPA chiefs have not had a future in elected political office, but Zeldin as a young and ambitious former congressman could be angling to change that, Ebell said.

“He needs to move up in the Cabinet, and he really is thinking about positioning himself to run for national office or to be picked for vice president,” Ebell said.

–

Emily Davies contributed to this report.