WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s decide to steer the Environmental Safety Company on Thursday mentioned he believes local weather change is actual and a menace however that the company he’s poised to steer is simply licensed, not required, to control carbon dioxide emissions.
Former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, talking at his Senate affirmation listening to, mentioned a 2007 choice by the Supreme Court docket gave the company statutory authority to control the heat-trapping greenhouse fuel however didn’t obligate the EPA to take motion.
Zeldin instructed the listening to that he believes local weather change is actual, a departure from his predecessors who led the EPA through the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2020 and from Trump himself, who has repeatedly referred to as local weather change a hoax.
“I imagine that local weather change is actual,” he instructed the committee, however didn’t reply on to questions on whether or not the U.S. wants to cut back its reliance on fossil fuels, a significant driver of carbon emissions.
Zeldin mentioned in his opening assertion that the incoming Trump administration has a mandate from American voters to guard the setting, however with out harming financial progress.
Trump has vowed to roll again the Biden administration’s climate-focused agenda, together with EPA laws geared toward slashing carbon dioxide, methane and different emissions from automobiles, energy vegetation and different industrial sources.
“The American folks elected President Trump final November partially as a consequence of severe issues about upward financial mobility and their battle to make ends meet,” Zeldin mentioned. “We will, and we should, defend our valuable setting with out suffocating the economic system.”
