Last week, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced over 30 deregulatory actions to move his agency away from costly, ineffective net-zero climate policies.
Billed as the largest deregulatory effort undertaken at the EPA, Administrator Zeldin announced 31 actions to prioritize human health and the environment over climate alarmism.
“By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,” Administrator Zeldin wrote in an accompanying Wall Street Journal article. “These actions will roll back trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and hidden taxes. As a result, the cost of living for American families will decrease, and essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business will become more affordable. Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities.”
Among the most notable changes announced is the reassessment of the 2009 Endangerment Finding—the holy grail of climate policies that deemed “carbon dioxide and certain other gases” as harmful pollutants. A review of this policy was mentioned in President Trump’s “Unleashing America Energy” executive order.
Former EPA chief-of-staff Mandy Gunasekara lauded this development, noting the Endangerment Finding is “based on skewed science” and has “crushed jobs, suppressed US energy development, & done little to help the environment.”
Other actions taken include repealing the controversial Clean Power Plan 2.0, nixing carbon cost reporting mandates, revoking electric vehicle mandates, and rewriting the Biden-era waters of the United States (WOTUS) rule.
Between 2021-2025, the Biden EPA enacted over $1.3 trillion worth of regulatory costs—the most of any governmental department. The most expensive policy, unsurprisingly, was the finalized Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles rule, which cost $870 billion and over 40,000 hours in paperwork.
Zeldin and his agency also canceled $20 billion in climate grants issued to eight organizations—including $2 billion to former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacy Abrams. Most of these organizations, unsurprisingly, were newly launched and had no track record of engaging on environmental issues.
Washington Free Beacon reporter Thomas Catenacci also revealed that $20 million was awarded to a group called Democracy Green to “restore wetlands and remove lead pipes in hundreds of homes” under the $1.6 billion Climate Justice Community Change Program. But here’s the rub: Catenacci found this group didn’t act on these priorities. He wrote:
But Democracy Green has never conducted wetlands restoration or lead pipe removals at any scale, a Washington Free Beacon review found. One of its top accomplishments includes providing fewer than 200 families in central North Carolina with home water quality test kits and, in some cases, with water filtration pitchers. Water test kits typically cost less than $10 and water filtration pitchers usually cost about $30, while lead pipe replacement projects are generally completed by licensed plumbing companies and cost $4,700 on average.
The majority of Biden-era climate grants, unsurprisingly, are rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. Senator Chuck Grassley determined over 90% of an EPA environmental justice appropriated by the 2021 American Rescue Plan grant went to “salaries, benefits, travel, taxes, rent and indirect expenses.” And Biden’s EPA overemphasized de-gendering bathrooms and policing pronoun use—things unrelated to promoting clean air, water, and lands.
The EPA is long overdue for some spring cleaning. And it won’t come at the expense of conserving the environment.