Zeldin Stars At Climate Denial Conference

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin embraced a community of climate change contrarians Wednesday in a speech that underscored how scientific outliers have made inroads with the Trump administration.

Zeldin acknowledged in his opening statements to the Heartland Institute’s conference in Washington that he was the first EPA chief to attend the annual gathering, which has long been shunned by Democratic and Republican administrations alike for advancing a fringe view that greenhouse gas emissions are beneficial.

“For those who wanted to criticize my appearance here before this group, it really shows the desperation of just how many walls have collapsed of this last line of defense,” Zeldin said.

Greenhouse gases, primarily from burning fossil fuels, have warmed the planet 1.4 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution began, according to the World Meteorological Organization, which has determined that the last 11 years are the hottest in recorded history. Rising temperatures have intensified extreme weather and disasters like floods and wildfires, turbocharged deadly heat waves and imposed costs through death, declining agricultural productivity, health ailments and property damage, according to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Attendees at the Heartland annual conference disagree with most, if not all, of those conclusions. They instead championed the role carbon dioxide plays in promoting plant growth, which they argue has been ignored by mainstream climate science — and past U.S. administrations. The overwhelming body of science shows that the negative consequences of climate pollution far outweigh the possible benefits, researchers say.

Zeldin, who has been floated as a possible replacement for former Attorney General Pam Bondi after she was fired by Trump last week, was met by loud applause when he spoke of EPA’s recent move to scrap a 2009 finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health by contributing to climate change.

The so-called endangerment finding undergirded all Clean Air Act rules aimed at containing planet-warming emissions. Its removal puts them all in legal jeopardy.

The appearance of the U.S. government’s top environmental official reflected a significant change from Republicans' past approaches to climate change, said James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute. He recalled the “uphill battle with people who would be our natural allies,” asserting that former President George W. Bush elevated officials who did not challenge the science showing that greenhouse gases are heating the planet.

He said that changed with Zeldin, who has led the Trump administration’s headlong charge into the long-simmering culture war surrounding climate change.

“We're seeing a deference to science — not what pollsters say will resonate with suburban women or whatever voting bloc they're looking at,” Taylor told the audience. “We even have the top environmental official in the administration — EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin — who is showing support, who is here to talk with us and to speak the truth. How times have changed.”

Zeldin’s remarks Wednesday amounted to an endorsement of the conference’s thesis that increased industrial emissions would benefit humans and the environment, not harm them. He said that the endangerment finding was based on the most pessimistic projections in a broad range of scenarios for human-driven climate disruption. Elites had elevated the worst-case scenarios to maximize their power, he said.

“There would be a cabal that would decide exactly which model is the chosen model, which methodology is the higher methodology,” Zeldin said. “And if all of you in this room, if any of you in this room dare to challenge any of that, well shame on you.”

The message was a vindication for the longtime attendees of the conference, who for years have sought to influence Washington policy from the fringes.

It was an “important” moment to have the nation’s top environmental official defy critics and address the annual event, said James Carlson, who recently retired from the Institute for Defense Analyses.

“It means that the administration wants to do the best for the country, period. It doesn't want to just follow a political realm,” he said.

EPA’s move to revoke the endangerment finding is at the heart of the tension between climate science and Trump’s vow to slash regulations, which he has said will boost the economy. EPA claimed when it repealed the finding that the move applied only to rules for motor vehicles — which were undone as part of the same regulatory package. But on Wednesday, Zeldin made it clear that the action could be applied to other sources of climate pollution.

He accused the Obama administration of issuing the finding “in order to be able to hoard more power for themselves,” starting with “light, medium and heavy vehicles” and moving “to stationary sources and oil and gas and airplanes.” EPA upended the finding solely on the basis of legal arguments — including that the Clean Air Act did not allow for the regulation of global pollutants like greenhouse gases — rather than assertions that would have tried to discredit climate science.

Zeldin spoke just before a panel took the stage to discuss a controversial Energy Department report on climate science that was initiated last year to support EPA’s endangerment finding repeal. The paper, which was written by five climate contrarians who were hand-picked by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, was cited heavily in last year’s proposed endangerment repeal before being sidelined in the final rollback. Attorneys warned that citing it could create legal vulnerabilities as the Trump administration defends the action in court.

States and environmental organizations have already filed legal challenges to the repeal. If Zeldin is confirmed to succeed Bondi he could lead the Justice Department as it defends the endangerment finding.

Zeldin was mum Wednesday on reports that he is being considered for attorney general. But he pledged as EPA administrator to stick to the letter of the law and not “fill that void by creatively giving myself powers that don't exist in statute.”

“The Supreme Court — in my opinion, quite correctly — would say that the EPA should not be putting forth trillions of dollars of regulation without there being a vote in Congress,” he added.