EPA Targets Dozens of Environmental Rules - MIRATECH
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EPA Targets Dozens of Environmental Rules

March 12, 2025

In a barrage of pronouncements on Wednesday, March 12, the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet, according to a March 12 article from The New York Times.

But beyond that, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reframed the purpose of the EPA In a two-minute-and-18-second video posted to X, Mr. Zeldin boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”

“From the campaign trail to Day 1 and beyond, President Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living,” Zeldin said. “We at EPA will do our part to power the great American comeback.”

Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970.

The EPA has “no obligation to promote agriculture or commerce; only the critical obligation to protect and enhance the environment,” the first administrator, William D. Ruckelshaus, said as he explained its mission to the country weeks after the EPA was created by President Richard M. Nixon. He said the agency would be focused on research, standards and enforcement in five areas: air pollution, water pollution, waste disposal, radiation and pesticides.

Zeldin said the EPA would unwind more than two dozen protections against air and water pollution. It would overturn limits on soot from smokestacks that have been linked to respiratory problems in humans and premature deaths as well as restrictions on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin. It would get rid of the “good neighbor rule” that requires states to address their own pollution when it’s carried by winds into neighboring states. And it would eliminate enforcement efforts that prioritize the protection of poor and minority communities.

In addition, when the agency creates environmental policy, it would no longer consider the costs to society from wildfires, droughts, storms and other disasters that might be made worse by pollution connected to that policy, Zeldin said.

The agency said it would work to erase the EPA’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by reconsidering decades of science that show global warming is endangering humanity. In his video, Zeldin derisively referred to that legal underpinning as “the holy grail of the climate change religion.”

Zeldin called Wednesday’s actions “the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history.” He added, “today the green new scam ends, as the EPA does its part to usher in a golden age of American success.”

The announcements do not carry the force of law. In almost every case, the EPA would have to undergo a lengthy process of public comment and develop environmental and economic justifications for the change.

The United States is the world’s largest historic emitter of carbon dioxide, a planet-warming greenhouse gas that scientists agree is driving climate change and intensifying hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts, as well as species extinction. Last year was the hottest in recorded history, and the United States experienced 27 disasters that each cost at least $1 billion, compared to three in 1980, adjusted for inflation.

Some of the most significant policy changes Zeldin said he planned include:

  • Rolling back restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Currently the EPA requires existing coal-burning power plants and new gas plants built in the United States to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 90 percent by 2039.

  • Rewriting tailpipe pollution standards that were designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.

  • Easing limits on mercury emissions from power plants, as well as restrictions on soot and haze from burning coal. A Biden-era rule had aimed to slash by 70 percent emissions from coal-burning power plants of mercury, which has been linked to developmental damage in children.

  • Greatly reducing the “social cost” of carbon, an economic estimate of the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That figure plays a significant role in weighing the costs and benefits of regulating industries.