EPA adopts fossil fuel-friendly approach to deregulation

The Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump has cut federal limits on air and water pollution and promoted fossil fuels, a metamorphosis that clashes with the agency’s stated mission — to protect human health and the environment.

- BY MICHAEL PHILLIS, ALEXA ST. JOHN AND MATTHEW DALY

EXPERTS say the federal agency's new direction comes at a cost to public health.

(RONALDO BOLANOS Los Angeles Times)

The administration says its actions will “unleash” the American economy, but environmentalists say the agency’s abrupt change in focus threatens to unravel years of progress on climate-friendly initiatives that could be hard or impossible to reverse.

“It just constantly wants to pat the fossil fuel business on the back and turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon era” when the agency didn’t exist, said historian Douglas Brinkley.

A lot happened in 2025 at “Trump’s EPA,” as Administrator Lee Zeldin frequently calls the agency. Zeldin proposed overturning the landmark finding that climate change is a threat to human health. He pledged to roll back dozens of environmental regulations in “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.” He froze billions of dollars for clean energy and upended agency research.

Zeldin has argued the EPA can protect the environment and grow the economy at the same time. He announced “five pillars” to guide the EPA’s work; four were economic goals, including energy dominance — Trump's shorthand for more fossil fuels — and boosting the auto industry.

A former New York congressman who had a record as a moderate Republican on some environmental issues, Zeldin said his views on climate change have evolved. Many federal and state climate goals are unattainable in the near future and come at a huge cost, he said.

“We should not be causing extreme economic pain for an individual or a family” because of policies aimed at “saving the planet,” he told reporters at EPA headquarters in early December.