How EPA repeal of Obama-era policy could impact Long Island

WASHINGTON — Environmentalists raised alarms Thursday after the Environmental Protection Agency — led by Long Island native Lee Zeldin — repealed an Obama-era legal finding that has been used for 17 years to regulate and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.   

Without the provision,  known as the endangerment finding,  environmental advocates contend Long Island’s 2.2 million gas-powered vehicles — the state’s largest source of greenhouse gases — could be contributing more carbon to the atmosphere. Some energy industry groups and conservative policy groups, however, celebrated Zeldin's announcement.  

The repeal would also remove the obligation for Long Island’s 26 power plants to improve efficiency and limit emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases.

Scientists have long warned the failure to limit planet-heating gases will accelerate the many effects of climate change, from drought and wildfire to life-threatening heat to catastrophic flooding of low-lying coastal areas like Long Island.

"It takes a wrecking ball to all of the progress we’ve made over the last two decades," said Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment.

Esposito, in a phone interview, said knowing the policy change was led by Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from Shirley, "compounds the pain."

"For Long Island, we're already feeling the devastating impacts of sea-level rise, we're threatened by the greater intensification of storms, people can't pay their homeowners insurance, and we're seeing the degrading of the water quality in our estuaries, all because of climate change," Esposito said. "This is an action that helps polluters and hurts every single American, but especially Long Islanders ... we live on an island ... we stick out in the middle of the ocean, these sea-level rises and storms are of intense concern to us."

Zeldin, speaking alongside President Donald Trump at a White House event to announce  the policy shift, argued deregulation would help lower the average cost of automobiles as automakers will no longer need to meet emissions standards mandated under the revoked policy.

"The red tape has been cut," Zeldin said. "Manufacturers will no longer be burdened by measuring, compiling or reporting greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles and engines."

Zeldin argued the Obama policy should never have been permitted to regulate emissions standards because it was an administrative policy, not a set of rules enshrined into law by Congress.

"If Congress wants EPA to regulate the heck out of greenhouse gases emitted from motor vehicles, then Congress can clearly make that the law, which they haven't done, for good reason," Zeldin said.

While environmentalists expressed worry over the policy shift, others welcomed the move. 

The American Petroleum Institute in a statement posted on X, said, "We can meet growing energy demand while continuing to cut emissions."

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank that helped developed much of Trump's second-term agenda, said in a statement the move would allow the United States to compete with China.

"President Trump's rescission of the Obama administration's 2009 Endangerment Finding is on solid legal, economic, and scientific grounds," the Foundation's executive vice president Derrick Morgan said in a statement posted on the group's website.

But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) both decried the rollback, arguing deregulation of emissions will hurt the environment and public health in the long run.

Gillibrand, in a statement, accused the Trump administration of "once again putting big polluters' profits over working families' health, worker safety, and our children’s future."

Save the Sound, an environmental advocacy group that works to protect Long Island Sound, said Thursday’s policy change "eliminates the foundation for federal action to meaningfully address climate change."

"In taking this action, the Environmental Protection Agency ignores science, contravenes the law by arbitrarily and capriciously reversing its previous findings, and shirks its obligation to ensure a safe and healthy environment," said Charles Rothenberger, Save the Sound’s in-house climate and energy attorney, in a statement.

The local effects of the Trump administration's  policy shift could be somewhat muted by New York’s own landmark climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019. The climate law requires all electricity generated in New York to produce  zero emissions by 2040, although Gov. Kathy Hochul has been slow to implement regulations that would move the state toward that goal.