Zeldin, a 44-year-old lawyer and former Military lieutenant, doesn’t have a background in environmental coverage. He made his foray into politics by the New York State Senate in 2011, serving till 2014. That yr, he was elected to be the US consultant for the state’s 1st Congressional District, which encompasses a lot of Lengthy Island.
As a congressman, Zeldin didn’t serve on any subcommittees overseeing environmental coverage. He usually voted in opposition to progressive local weather and surroundings insurance policies, incomes him a lifetime rating of simply 14 p.c from the League of Conservation Voters, an advocacy group that tracks congressmembers’ positions on environmental laws. On the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, he voted in opposition to an modification to dam the EPA from finalizing a Trump-era soot commonplace that may expose communities of colour to extra air air pollution that research have linked to elevated Covid mortality. The modification finally handed.
In 2021, Zeldin voted in opposition to a invoice that may require public firms to reveal details about the local weather dangers of their enterprise fashions. That invoice handed as effectively. The next yr, he supported a failed invoice that may have rescinded US participation within the United Nations Framework Conference on Local weather Change, a course of that encourages worldwide coordination on local weather coverage and contains participation in the annual UN local weather convention.
Notably, Zeldin voted in favor of a invoice that may require the EPA to set a consuming water commonplace for PFAS and PFOA, the so-called “endlessly chemical substances” that accumulate within the surroundings and have been linked to a variety of cancers and different severe well being points. Final yr, a neighborhood information station discovered that 33 of Lengthy Island’s 48 water districts have traces of those chemical substances of their consuming water.
In 2022, Zeldin ran for governor of New York and misplaced to Hochul.
Zeldin’s appointment marks a departure from present EPA administrator Michael Regan, whose time period will expire when Trump assumes workplace in January. Not like Zeldin, Regan has a background in environmental science, and earlier than being nominated as administrator served as secretary of North Carolina’s Division of Environmental High quality and labored as an air high quality specialist within the EPA. As EPA administrator, he has overseen the Biden administration’s historic push towards environmental justice, which has included group engagement classes, the strengthening of nationwide requirements for particulate matter, and the overhaul of laws for a lot of chemical crops.
It stays to be seen whether or not and to what extent Regan’s initiatives and laws will persist through the years of a second Trump administration. Zeldin’s nomination must be confirmed with a vote from the Senate, which gained a Republican majority within the elections earlier this month.
If confirmed, Zeldin can have appreciable energy to form the nationwide course of local weather and surroundings coverage. Along with overseeing the enforcement of present environmental legal guidelines and laws, he will likely be tasked with making ready the EPA’s annual price range, which determines how a lot funding will likely be allotted towards efforts like state oversight and air monitoring. A extra fossil fuel-inclined administrator would possibly select to intestine these components of the company, enabling industry-friendly state companies just like the Louisiana Division of Environmental High quality or the Texas Fee on Environmental High quality to control at the hours of darkness.
Trump ran on a platform that prioritized minimizing regulatory oversight and maximizing fossil gasoline manufacturing. Zeldin’s appointment can be key for seeing that by.
