Director of the US Environment Protection Agency wants to weaken regulation
The administrator of the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) has defended with the Trump government that it reconsider a scientific acquired that has been the basis of policies against climate change.
In a report sent to the White House, Lee Zeldin, defended the review of an EPA understanding that determines that greenhouse gases are a threat to people’s health and well-being, four people revealed to Associated Press as anonymity, because the recommendation is not public.
The consecration of that understanding, based on scientific bases, in the clean air law, is the pillar of regulations that include climatic aspects intended for motor vehicles, electricity production and other polluting sources.
An EPA spokesman refused on Wednesday to reveal Zeldin’s recommendation, which was made last week following an executive order of Donald Trump.
This order, signed on the first day of Trump in the White House, ordered the EPA to present a report “on the legality and continuation of the applicability” of that stipulation.
The Washington Post initially reported that Zeldin had urged the White House to annul it.
Dating from Barack Obama’s era in the presidency, the understanding in question “is the axis of federal government policies for what the president and I call the climate lie,” said Steve Mumps, a former Trump counselor, who disputes established science on climate change.
“If you disconnect this, everything EPA does about the weather disappears,” Milly told AP.
Trump, during a meeting of his government on Wednesday, said that Zeldin had told him that he was going to eliminate about 65% of EPA workers. “A number of people who weren’t doing their job. They were just obstructionists,” Trump said.
Myron Ebell, another former Trump advisor who has questioned the scientific basis of climate change, said on Wednesday he was “very excited” with the eventual recommendation of Zeldin.
Environmental defense groups and legal experts understand that any attempt to nullify these scientific understandings have little probabilities of success.
“This would be a foolish mission,” said David Doniger, a climate expert in Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “In the face of overwhelming science, it is impossible to think that EPA could develop a contradictory theory that could stand in court.”
Trump, who has repeatedly criticized what he claims to be a “climate fraud” promoted by democrats and environmental advocates, can see this proposal as a “deadly shot” that would authorize him to invalidate all climate change legislation, he advanced.
But countered, the courts have defended EPA’s authority in regulating greenhouse gases pollution under clean air law.
