Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Wednesday defended the agency’s repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding, telling a Heartland Institute conference that climate change skeptics should “celebrate vindication.” The move strips away the legal basis that had supported federal rules aimed at slowing climate change, handing industry and political allies a cleaner runway while ordinary people are left to absorb the consequences. **Who Gets Protected** The EPA earlier this year revoked the endangerment finding, a scientific conclusion that for 16 years was the central basis for regulating planet-warming emissions from power plants, vehicles and other sources. The repeal eliminates all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say. The Trump administration argued the finding hurts industry and the economy and claimed the Obama and Biden administrations twisted science to determine that greenhouse gases are a public health risk. Zeldin delivered the keynote address at the conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that rejects mainstream climate science and what it calls “climate alarmism.” He said the repeal of the 2009 “endangerment finding” reversed decades of unthinking adherence to liberal politicians and environmental groups about the dangers of climate change. “Today is a moment to celebrate. It is a day to celebrate vindication,” Zeldin said. **The People Paying the Price** Zeldin’s appearance before the conservative group reflected the reversal that President Donald Trump’s administration has carried out of traditional policies meant to protect the environment. The EPA has rolled back dozens of air and water protections and has said it does not have legal authority to regulate climate change. Environmentalists denounced Zeldin’s appearance, accusing him of “rallying climate deniers” at a time when climate change is creating greater risks of extreme weather, including stronger hurricanes, more dangerous floods and more intense wildfires. Joe Bonfiglio, U.S. director of the Environmental Defense Fund, said Zeldin’s speech “promotes disinformation” and amounts to doing the bidding of Heartland’s secretive donors. He said, “The Heartland Institute is not a serious scientific organization. It’s a disinformation factory,” and added, “Having the EPA administrator serve as their opening act isn’t just embarrassing — it’s a signal of how completely the Trump administration has abandoned its obligation to protect the public from pollution.” Legal challenges have been filed by nearly two dozen states, along with cities and public health and environmental groups. That legal route now sits alongside the rollback itself, a familiar ritual in which institutions argue over the shape of regulation while the machinery of extraction keeps moving. **The Donors, the Think Tank, the Script** Heartland, based in Illinois, describes itself as a “free-market think tank” and says a key goal is to “challenge the narrative that the world faces a climate crisis” driven by the burning of fossil fuels. The organization does not disclose its funder list but has received financial support from oil and gas interests. James Taylor, the group’s president, hailed Zeldin’s speech and called Zeldin “the greatest EPA administrator ever.” An EPA spokeswoman responded, saying “the era of EPA as a vehicle for radical ideology is over.” Carolyn Holran said Zeldin speaks before a “wide variety of ideologically different groups and individuals to promote the agenda of the Trump EPA,” and said Zeldin has returned the agency’s focus to fulfill its statutory obligations to protect human health and the environment, “backed by gold standard science, not doomsday models designed to scare the public into compliance.” Bonfiglio also called it “surreal” that the head of the EPA would appear before a “fringe of the conservative right” and “ask for his flowers.” He called the speech tone-deaf and even insulting to Americans, given the rising costs of gasoline and other energy and more frequent occurrences of extreme weather such as a gigantic heat dome that baked the Southwest last month and smashed March heat records in 14 states. Bonfiglio said in an interview, “The Heartland Institute and its supporters don’t want you to look out the window. They actually need you to not look out the window in order to defend their positions. A core to their belief is that climate change is not a threat.” Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York who is widely believed to be under consideration for a possible promotion to attorney general following Pam Bondi’s forced departure last week, told the Heartland conference, “You were right there on the front lines against there being an endangerment finding in 2009.”
