How Much Damage Can the New, Unprotective EPA Do?
The agency’s plan to disavow its finding that greenhouse-gas emissions endanger human well-being is dispiriting, but there are workarounds.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has a constituent of one now: the fossil-fuel industry.
Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
In March, the humor publication The Onion ran a story with the headline “EPA to Drop ‘E,’ ‘P’ From Name.” Sometimes things are funny because they’re true. Other times satire buckles beneath the weight of reality. This was arguably an example of the latter: About a week earlier, I had run a column for this very serious publication with a similar headline.
At most, there’s only gallows humor to be derived from the move by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump and Administrator Lee Zeldin to abandon any pretense of protecting the environment. Human suffering and economic loss will inevitably follow. The only question now is how much damage “The Agency” will be allowed to do. The good news is that this dangerous state of affairs doesn’t have to be permanent.