WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic senator slammed President Donald Trump as trying to realize the "wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry."
The vivid comment was made to Raw Story after Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency chief announced the scrapping of a key control on greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaking at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) fumed to Raw Story that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the former New York Republican congressman and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, was doing “the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, which paid good money for this kind of corruption."
“The endangerment finding is what brings carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act,” Whitehouse added of the measure Zeldin promised to scrap this week.
Issued in 2009, the endangerment finding also imposes emissions standards on cars, trucks and buses.
Announcing its demise, Zeldin claimed “the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”
The move is being hailed within the administration as “a monumental step toward returning to commonsense policies that expand access to affordable, reliable, secure energy and improve quality of life for all Americans,” as Energy Secretary Chris Wright claimed.
But Whitehouse charged the Trump administration with simply rewarding polluters who are also big money donors, by pursuing “the deletion of all regulation of carbon emissions, which is obviously the wet dream of the dirtiest players in the fossil fuel industry and the result of a lot of dark money spending by the industry to buy an administration that will do its dirty bidding.”
Zeldin’s move has prompted outcry among climate crisis activists but it is not a done deal, as lawyers on both sides gear up for what promises to be a drawn-out legal battle.
“I think it has … legal problems,” Whitehouse said, “because there really isn't a factual basis for what they are doing, outside of the boardrooms of Big Oil and creepy front groups who pretend climate change isn't real.”
Raw Story asked Whitehouse if he had any hope that the MAGA-infused GOP of Trump and Zeldin might resist efforts to cripple the fight against climate change. He said he did.
“You could actually see fairly significant efforts within the Republican Senate Caucus to try to repair some of the stupid damage that Trumpsters were trying to do,” Whitehouse said.
“We continue to have ongoing, healthy conversations about carbon water tariffs, about interesting solar investments, we had a very good conversation last night with a Republican member about the threat to the real estate markets arising out of the uninsurability and hence unmortgageability of so much American real estate.
“I think there's a lot of genuine and underlying concern, but Trump’s political strategy is to try to terrorize Republicans in the Senate, and he's done a pretty good job of it, and most of their money comes from fossil fuels, so they are also having that problem.
“But facts don't go away. As [President John] Adams said [in 1770], facts are stubborn things, and so I have not given up.
“It may take a real kick in the head, like a collapse of Florida's insurance and real estate market, to get them to focus on this as a today issue and not a someday issue.”
'I didn't see it'
At least one Republican from that climate-vulnerable state seemed unlikely, at first glance, to heed Whitehouse’s words.
Catching up with Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) as he walked through the Capitol, Raw Story asked: “Have you been able to look at the EPA announcement this week on climate change?”
“I didn't see it,” Scott said, of the widely publicized, reported and debated announcement.
Another Republican, from a state historically dominated by the coal industry, was giddy when discussing the dismantling of the EPA.
“What do you make of what Zeldin is doing at EPA, his announcement this week?” Raw Story asked Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, (R-WV). “Do you think it’s a game changer?”
“It's a huge announcement,” Capito said. “I think it just shows [it’s about] getting rid of the over-regulation [of fossil fuel industries]. So I'm gonna support it.”
Many Democrats are retooling their message and focusing on public health, rather than rising temperatures and seas.
“What Lee Zeldin announced was the greatest crime against nature ever committed in American and world history,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) fumed to Raw Story.
“What Zeldin announced was a complete capitulation to the oil, gas and coal industry, and giving them a permission slip to continue to pollute and endanger the planet and the health of all Americans.
“There is now going to be a dramatic increase in the number of cancers, asthmas and other diseases in the United States of America, and it's going to hit kids and it's going to hit pregnant women disproportionately.
“So what Zeldin just did was to fulfill the payoff that Trump is providing to the oil, gas and coal industry for their contributions by the hundreds of millions to his re-election campaign, but the price is going to be paid by American families.”
No matter what Zeldin and Trump’s EPA are up to, Democrats say the GOP and their funders can’t just wave a wad of cash and reverse the globe’s changing climate.
“It's very bad for the climate,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) told Raw Story, of Zeldin’s move. “The best thing we can do is help people to understand that all these increasing natural disasters are being made worse because of Republican policies.”
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