Ashley Siefert Nunes
WASHINGTON—The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) joined more than 150 civil rights, environmental, faith, health and worker organizations in signing and submitting a letter today calling for the removal of Lee Zeldin from his role as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). According to letter signatories, no EPA administrator in history—Democrat or Republican—has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission.
“In just one year, Administrator Zeldin has dismantled protections that keep our kids, families, and climate safe, and our air and water clean,” the letter says. “He slashed vital funding, gutted agency staff, and has rigged the system to put corporate polluters first, at the expense of our health.” It continues, calling out other harms by the agency such as willfully ignoring science and health data, decimating environmental justice programs and offices, increasing health care and electricity bills, and worsening quality of life for people across the country.
The letter was released following the EPA announcing its final rule to undo the longstanding science-based Endangerment Finding, which affirmed that heat-trapping emissions driving climate change endanger the public. EPA has a clear obligation and responsibility, under the Clean Air Act, to regulate heat-trapping from vehicles, power plants, oil and gas operations, and other sources of these pollutants. Last month, UCS joined a group of environmental, public health and science nonprofits in filing suit against the EPA and Administrator Zeldin for its unlawful repeal of the Endangerment Finding and rolling back emissions standards for vehicles.
“Administrator Zeldin’s established pattern of placing polluter profits above the health and safety of people across the country cannot stand,” said UCS President and CEO Dr. Gretchen Goldman. “The science establishing harm to human health and the environment from global warming emissions is undeniable. The unprecedented, climate-fueled heat wave a large swath of the United States has been experiencing is only the latest example. The public deserves an EPA administrator who will face the challenge of the climate crisis and fossil fuel and toxics pollution head on with proven policy solutions, not actively serve as an agent of destruction beholden to the whims of oil, gas, and chemical industry executives and an authoritarian, anti-science U.S. president.”
The letter concludes by stating: “EPA’s mandate is clear: Protect human health and the environment. By corrupting EPA’s mission, Administrator Zeldin has abandoned his sworn duty and betrayed the trust Congress and the American people placed in him. We have seen enough. Administrator Zeldin must go.”