Trump appoints new environmental chief who backs his "drill baby, drill" mantra

Donald Trump has chosen a new environmental chief who shares the President Elect’s desire for the United States to once again pull out of the Paris climate agreement.

After Mr Trump branded climate change ‘all a big hoax’, he has now picked Lee Zeldin to head his incoming administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Insiders say Mr Trump is pinning his ‘drill baby, drill’ hopes to reinvigorate the US oil industry on Mr Zeldin and many believe it was no coincidence he announced his appointment on the first day of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan.

"Lee, with his strong legal background, has been a true fighter for America First policies," a statement from Mr Trump's team said.
"He will ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions to unleash the power of American businesses while maintaining the highest environmental standards, including the cleanest air and water on the planet."

But Mr Zeldin, a longtime supporter of the former president, does not appear to have any experience in environmental issues. He was also among the Republicans in Congress who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.

After yesterday’s announcement, Mr Zeldin, a former New York congressman, promised on social media to “restore US energy dominance” while "protecting access to clean air and water".

But a rating by the League of Conservation of Voters, external gave him a score of just 14 out of 100 when it comes to his environmental voting record in Washington.

And Mr Trump campaigned on a platform that was often summarised in three words: “drill baby drill.”

 
He promised to undo much of Joe Biden’s climate legacy – after doing the same to President Barack Obama’s environmental protections in 2016.

Mr Trump's first term saw the rollback of over 100 environmental regulations, a trend likely now to continue and potentially expand in a second term.

The President Elect’s vow to pull out of the Paris agreement - which he also did in his first term - is likely to be wholeheartedly backed by Mr Zeldin who has previously publicly said he does not back the deal.

The withdrawal is set to once again leave America as one of the only countries not to be a party to the 2015 pact, in which nearly 200 governments have made non-binding pledges to reduce their planet-warming pollution.

Mr Trump’s position, following his victory in last week’s election, is threatening to overshadow the ongoing COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where the United States and other countries are thrashing out details related to phasing down fossil fuels and providing climate aid to poorer nations.

Climate scientists have warned that the US’s absence from the deal will mean other countries are forced to make bigger reductions to their pollution.

But it will also inevitably raise questions from some countries as to how much more effort they should put in when the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter is walking away.

David Waskow, head of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative, explained: “Countries are very committed to Paris, I don’t think there’s any question about that.

“What I do think is at risk is whether the world is able to follow through on what it committed to in Paris.”

It was back in June that the former president pledged he would quit the global pact, as he did in 2017 during his first stint in the office.

And just last weekend Mr Trump publicly declared that climate change was “all a big hoax.”

“We don’t have a global warming problem,” he said at a campaign appearance.

His position comes in spite of years of scientific evidence that an otherwise, and amid projections that 2024 is set to be the warmest year on record, surpassing a milestone set only last year.

It is now believed that when Mr Trump takes office in January, he will file a request to the United Nations to withdraw from the agreement again.

But this time it would only take a year for that move to take effect under the terms of the pact, not the three years it did previously.

During that time, the Trump administration could ignore past US climate commitments established by President Joe Biden and refuse to submit any new plans for reducing greater amounts of carbon pollution, according to analysts.