Trump EPA nominee Zeldin vows to protect environment, but sidesteps ‘existential threat’ of climate change

WASHINGTON (CN) — Former New York Representative Lee Zeldin told lawmakers Thursday that environmental stewardship “must transcend politics,” as he faced questions about his nomination to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under incoming President Donald Trump.

“I believe in the rule of law, and I want to work with people to ensure they do their part to protect the environment,” Zeldin told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The former congressman, tapped by Trump in November to be the government’s top environmental regulator, appeared in Washington as firefighters on the West Coast battled the devastating Palisades wildfire which has burned tens of thousands of acres of land in the Los Angeles area.

The California fire and other extreme weather events, which experts agree are becoming more intense and more frequent thanks to climate change, were top of mind during Zeldin’s nomination hearing.

And Democrats on the Senate’s environment committee worried that the second Trump administration — led by a president who has repeatedly suggested that climate change is a “hoax” — might place the interests of the fossil fuel industry and other polluters ahead of its responsibility to dampen the impacts to a warming planet.

“While running for president, [Trump] met with fossil fuel industry executives and told them they should give him a billion dollars in exchange for his reversing the rules that protect our air and water and limit the pollution that is driving climate change,” said Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

At a dinner held at his Mar-a-Lago resort last April, then-candidate Trump told gathered oil lobbyists that he would peel back environmental regulations if they donated $1 billion to his campaign.

On Thursday, Whitehouse argued those executives would now be looking for a return on their “political investment.”

“The question, then, for Mr. Zeldin, here before us as President Trump’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, is simple,” he said. “Will he follow the science and the economics and protect our air, water and climate — or will he merely be a rubber stamp for looters and polluters who are setting the Trump agenda?”

Echoing Whitehouse’s concerns was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who asked Zeldin whether he agreed with Trump that climate change was a hoax.

“I believe climate change is real,” the nominee told Sanders. But he demurred on the president-elect’s comments, saying instead that he had heard Trump talk about climate change as part of a “criticism of policies.”

“I think he’s concerned about the economic costs of some policies where there’s a debate and a difference of opinion,” said Zeldin.

Sanders wasn’t convinced.

“I respectfully disagree with you,” he said. “I think he has called it a hoax time and time again.”

Trump has on several occasions referred to what he calls “the global warming hoax” and has suggested that rising sea levels and other impacts of climate change are nothing to worry about. He has also been critical of alternative, renewable energy sources such as wind power.

Zeldin also did not directly answer questions from the Vermont Democrat about whether he would consider climate change an “existential threat” to society.

“We must, with urgency, be addressing these issues as we talk about any way that the EPA can do its part to make sure that our air and water are cleaner,” he told Sanders.

The nominee did tell lawmakers that the U.S. should do more to protect the environment — though he argued that, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, other countries were worse off.

“United States emissions have been going down over the course of the last couple of decades,” Zeldin told Whitehouse. “I would say that we will never have done enough to ensure that our water and air is clean, safe and healthy. Whatever we do every day to achieve this objective, we need to wake up the next day looking for ways to do more.”

The former New York congressman, meanwhile, positioned his potential leadership at the EPA as part of a “whole of government approach” to advance Americans’ well-being, arguing that the environmental regulator should be more transparent and practice “cooperative federalism” by working more closely with state and local governments.

And the EPA should also work with the private sector to develop “common sense, smart regulation,” Zeldin added.

“We can and we must protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy,” he said.

The former New York congressman, whose district included the eastern reaches of Long Island, cited his own climate chops while in Congress, pointing to bipartisan efforts to preserve the Long Island Sound and his support of legislation shielding public lands and clamping down on harmful PFAS substances in drinking water.

The Environment and Public Works Committee’s Republican contingent agreed that Zeldin was the right person to head up the government’s chief environmental agency.

“Americans deserve clean air and clean water,” said Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, who introduced the nominee. “They also deserve clear rules and common sense from the government. Instead, the approach over the last four years has been based solely on radical environmentalism. Congressman Zeldin will correct the course of the EPA.”

Trump, just days away from taking office for the second time, vowed on the campaign trail to take a hatchet to environmental regulations, such as tighter pollution standards for cars and light trucks inked by the EPA last year. The president-elect has also pledged to ramp up U.S. oil and natural gas production.

Follow @BenjaminSWeiss