Former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via ZUMA Press

This story was originally published by Inside climate news and is reproduced here as part of Office for air conditioning collaboration.

By touching the ex New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, who heads the Environmental Protection Agency, has chosen President-elect Donald Trump to put his radical plan to undo climate policy in the hands of a staunch ally who is adept at projecting an image of a moderate conservationist.

As a Republican representing a district on Long Island that is “almost completely surrounded by water,” as Zeldin often put it, he has successfully fought in Congress for coastal resilience and conservation projects, and expressed hope for a bipartisan compromise on climate, calling it “a very important issue.”

But Zeldin has never advanced any proposals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, like other Trump-era congressional Republicans, has consistently voted against such proposals. He came closer than any Republican in 20 years to capturing his state’s highest office, campaigning on a pledge to overturn the state’s ban on fracking.

“I think at times he spoke moderately when it was convenient to do so, but I don’t think this is the Lee Zeldin that New York has seen in the last four years,” said Sam Bernhardt, a New York police officer. director for Food & Water Action. He believes the most telling element of Zeldin’s record is his vote against certifying the 2020 election.

“He did it because Trump told him to, so I think we can extrapolate that most of Lee Zeldin’s work at the EPA will also be things that Trump told him to do,” Bernhardt said.

In a Fox News interview on Monday, shortly after his selection was announced, Zeldin said the president-elect had given him a long list of regulations to withdraw.

“The president was talking about unleashing economic prosperity through the EPA,” Zeldin said. “There are regulations that the left wing of this country has supported through regulatory power that end up causing businesses to go in the wrong direction. And President Trump, when he called me, my God, he said 15, 20 different priorities.”

The agency that has spent the past four years at the helm of policy to reduce greenhouse gas pollution in the US economy will shift gears in the “first 100 days,” Zeldin said, to become a vehicle for the agenda of “dominance energy” of Trump.

Zeldin is one a markedly different choice than the leaders Trump chose to lead the EPA during his first term. Trump’s first EPA chief, Scott Pruitt, was an Oklahoma attorney general who sued the agency repeatedly, leading Republican states’ pushback against President Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives.

But upon arriving in Washington, Pruitt quickly became embroiled in multiple controversies — over his travel practices, his use of government employees for personal commissions and his dealings with lobbyists. Pruitt resigned under pressure and was replaced by former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, a behind-the-scenes player on Capitol Hill and at the EPA. He stirred up less drama as he pursued Trump’s deregulatory agenda, eventually overturning more than 100 environmental rules.

Zeldin comes to EPA not as a fighter or a bureaucrat, but as a politician with a track record of successfully delivering Republican messages to Democratic strongholds. Trump trusted Zeldin to act as a surrogate for him on the campaign trail — from Iowa at the start of the race to Georgia and Pennsylvania at the end.

“He’s certainly a savvy political operator,” said Frank Maisano, a senior director at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell, which represents a number of clients in the energy industry.

“He wasn’t very well known for taking in-depth positions on EPA issues, but I’m not surprised he’s getting a position like this,” Maisano said. “I’m sure what he’s going to do is be a good leader and a good spokesperson for the president’s energy and environment agenda.”

Zeldin, in recent years, has advocated unleashing fossil fuel production without questioning climate science. That also sets him apart from Pruitt and, to some extent, Wheeler, both of whom were protégés of one of Congress’s most feisty climate science deniers, the late Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who died earlier this year.

In 2019, during a debate on the first climate legislation to reach the House in a decade, Zeldin praised Democratic sponsors for their “intentions and support” of a measure that sought to hold the Trump administration to the Accord’s goals from Paris. But he still revealed his reasons for agreeing with Trump’s decision to leave: There wasn’t enough debate or study on its potential economic impact, the measure never came before Congress for a vote, and China and India should to be forced to do more. cuts.

“We needed a better understanding for the world and other countries to step up and do more, more transparency and debate and a vote here in Congress,” Zeldin said. “This is in the best interest of all our constituents. Hopefully we can agree on the numbers and a process going forward and work together on a bipartisan basis.”

But no bipartisan effort would ever emerge in Congress to comprehensively address the need to reduce the nation’s greenhouse gas pollution as aggressively as scientists say is needed to avoid catastrophic climate risk. Zeldin, like all Republicans in Congress, voted against the legislative fix that the Biden administration hammered out, the massive clean energy incentives and subsidies contained in the Inflation Relief Act of 2022.

The future of the IRA is now unclear, with Trump poised to win back the presidency and Republicans poised to take control of Congress. And the other key part of Biden’s climate agenda — regulations on vehicles, power plants and the oil and gas industry — is on the sidelines. Zeldin received the axe.

Zeldin, a native from Suffolk County, became one of the youngest attorneys in New York State at the age of 23. He then served four years on active duty in the US Army, deploying to Iraq in 2006 and holding roles as an intelligence officer, prosecutor. , and a magistrate. Zeldin continues to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserve.

In 2020, he spoke about the damage Superstorm Sandy did to his district eight years earlier when he spoke in favor of water resource development legislation that later became part of the omnibus budget bill passed by Congress and signed by Trump.

“The widespread devastation has underscored the dire need to ensure our communities are better prepared for the future,” Zeldin said, speaking in favor of prioritizing and increasing spending limits for dredging and coastal storm risk management projects. -along the coast of Long Island.

Zeldin also helped lead a long and ultimately successful effort to preserve Plum Island in Long Island Sound, which became a key habitat for birds, seals, fish and coral. The federally owned island had been at risk of being sold for development.

He was one of 12 Republicans who voted with a majority of House Democrats in 2019 to ban drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a measure the Senate never acted on.

But there were limits to Zeldin’s advocacy of coastal protection. He unsuccessfully sponsored legislation in 2016 that sought to block presidents, particularly Obama, from creating national monuments in the exclusive economic zone along the coast of the United States. “I do so on behalf of commercial fishermen on Long Island and across the nation who, like many other hard-working Americans, are increasingly under attack from this administration’s executive overreach,” Zeldin said at the time.

In his four terms in Congress from 2015 to 2023, Zeldin generated a pro-environment voting record of 14 percent, according to the League of Conservation Voters, or LCV. That’s a high score compared to other House Republicans (their average was 4 percent in the last Congress), but environmental advocates said he signaled a lack of concern about issues that would be his purview at the EPA .

“Trump made his climate and environmental action agenda very clear during the campaign,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, LCV’s senior vice president of government affairs. “During the confirmation process, we would challenge Lee Zeldin to look like he’s better than Trump’s campaign promises or his own failing environmental score of 14 percent if he wants to be in charge of protecting the air we breathe and of the water we drink and find solutions to climate change.”

If Zeldin’s previous statements are a guide, he will likely vow to protect clean air and water even as he touts the economic benefits of expanded fossil fuel development.

“We all have voters who want access to clean air and clean water,” Zeldin said before his 2019 vote against keeping Trump on the goals of the Paris Agreement. “It’s something that, whether you represent a district in Flint, Michigan, or whether you’re in Tampa, Florida, or on the east end of Long Island, we all want to advocate for that for our constituents.”

When he ran against Gov. Kathy Hochul in his 2022 bid for New York’s top office, Zeldin advocated overturning the fracking ban that had been passed under former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “If New York would reverse the Cuomo-Hochul ban on safe resource extraction in many parts of the state, jobs will be created, energy costs will fall, communities will be revitalized, and our state can thrive again.” , Zeldin posted. on Twitter during his campaign.

Zeldin lost, but garnered more votes than any Republican running for the state’s top office since former Gov. Nelson Rockefeller 50 years earlier. Maisano said that message seems to have resonated with many New Yorkers, who live on the same geological formation, the Marcellus Shale, as their neighbors to the south.

“In many cases, New York’s fracking ban has been a scourge because Pennsylvania reaps the benefits and New York reaps nothing,” Maisano said.

Trump, who is now seeking to lift restrictions on all oil and gas development in the nation, said Zeldin “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions are made in a way that unleashes the power of American business while maintaining while the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet.”

Trump, who once frequently called climate change a “hoax” but dropped that rhetoric before his 2016 presidential bid, has honed an environmental message that has allowed him to successfully campaign for a pro-fuel agenda fossils at a time when polls have shown swing voters preferred clean energy and climate action. In Zeldin, Trump has found someone to drive that agenda who is adept at the same kind of messaging.