EDITORIAL: Trump’s EPA pick will challenge the green machine

Donald Trump has quickly begun selecting members of his governing team. On Monday, he tabbed former New York congressman Lee Zeldin to run the EPA.

Not surprisingly, progressive greens attacked the choice.

Mr. Zeldin is “obviously not what you would hope to see from the person who could be in charge of protecting the air we breathe, the water we drink and combating the climate crisis,” Tiernan Sittenfeld with the League of Conservation Voters told The New York Times.

Translation: Mr. Zeldin rejects the apocalyptic notion that human extinction lurks on the horizon unless the United States radically reforms its economy in service to government central planning that suits the left’s environmental agenda.

Mr. Zeldin, 44, is an attorney who served in the U.S. army. He will bring a more pragmatic perspective to his position. As a Republican member of Congress, he voted against the Biden administration’s woefully misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, explaining “that it raises taxes, adds 87,000 new IRS agents and spends hundreds of billions of dollars our country doesn’t have on far-left policies our country can’t afford.”

Mr. Zeldin acknowledges that, despite impractical deadlines for a green energy transition, fossil fuels remain necessary for the foreseeable future to ensure the nation’s prosperity. He takes a more skeptical view on the EPA’s efforts to micromanage industries through handouts and regulation.

“It is an honor to join President Trump’s Cabinet as EPA Administrator,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on X. “We will restore US energy dominance, revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the US the global leader of AI. We will do so while protecting access to clean air and water.”

This could take shape on a number of fronts. Renewable energy isn’t going away, but expect Mr. Zeldin and the second Trump administration to roll back edicts intended to discourage domestic development of the nation’s traditional energy resources. In addition, Forbes reports that Mr. Trump is likely to “selectively target” certain “federal grant and loan programs that he views as favoring clean energy over traditional fossil fuel industries.”

Expect, too, for Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Trump to loosen the reins on Detroit automakers, which are bleeding red ink while the Biden White House and congressional Democrats force them to build electric vehicles regardless of consumer preferences and market realities. There will likely be a legal fight over whether California and other blue states are exceeding their authority by foolishly attempting to outlaw the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles within the next decade.

This should be good news for Americans struggling to pay soaring energy bills thanks to green mandates. Mr. Zeldin is a strong choice.