Donald Trump tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin as his nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, promising that he “will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses.”
Since his failed gubernatorial bid in 2022, Zeldin has been in the pay of reactionary fracking billionaire Tim Dunn’s America First Policy Institute. Dunn was the eighth-largest individual donor to Trump’s 2024 campaign, having backed the president-elect and other rightwing candidates to the tune of at least $35.4 million. Dunn has derided attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions as “silliness,” saying in 2023: “It would be ideal if we could get rid of this ‘CO2 as a pollutant’ business.”
Fossil fuel bonanza
If confirmed by the Senate, Dunn’s reliable retainer Zeldin will be in charge of “protecting” the environment. This is a clear and direct attack—not on some abstract, faraway “wilderness”—but on the health and safety of all American workers and the very habitability of this planet.
Oil and gas industry profits increased by 160% in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, which spent more than $3 billion subsidizing fossil fuels in 2022 alone. The oil and gas barons will look to continue the bonanza in Trump’s second term.
During his first stint in office, Trump attempted to slash the EPA budget by 31%, and successfully lowered environmental standards. Studies indicate that this will cause an estimated 8,000 more avoidable deaths each year, and millions more are likely to develop health conditions due to exposure to air and water pollutants. He opened nearly all US waters to offshore drilling, including millions of acres of protected Alaskan wilderness and areas of the Eastern seaboard where oil spills would be especially damaging.
Looking ahead, Trump plans not only to roll back federal regulations on pollution and fossil fuels, but also to challenge states like California that have begun to set their own, more stringent, regulations. There can be no doubt that Zeldin’s EPA will focus on protecting short-term capitalist profits at the expense of long-term health impacts to the international working class—and ultimately human civilization itself.
Race against time
The large scale retooling required to stave off further climate disaster will never be profitable for the capitalists. As we wrote in July 2024,
“We’re in a race against time. You can’t plan or control what you don’t own. This is why the RCI fights for the expropriation of the Fortune 500, to be brought into public ownership as part of a democratically planned economy. A workers’ government would rationally harness human creativity and the planet’s natural resources to transition rapidly from fossil fuels while accommodating those currently working in that industry.
“As with everything else in this system, all roads lead to class struggle. To fight climate change, fight capitalism!”