Lee Zeldin wasn't always hostile to climate regulation. When he was just a Republican congressman from Long Island, Zeldon was open to finding solutions to the crisis. In 2019, he even joined Democrats to stop an amendment that would strip the Environmental Protection Agency of some of its power. But ever since President Donald Trump appointed him as the head of that agency, Zeldin has taken a slash and burn approach.

The EPA issued sweeping climate and environmental rollbacks, 31 separate actions in a span of two hours. According to Zeldin, the EPA is, in his words, reconsidering wastewater regulations for the power plants and will quote, update coal ash regulation.

On Tuesday, the agency came out with plans for another rollback that could transform the fight against climate change.

If finalized, today's announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.

Zeldin says they want to repeal a key scientific finding that has been the underpinning of several significant pollution regulations over the last 16 years.

We want to hear from the American public to finalize a regulation that not only proposes to rescind the endangerment finding but all greenhouse gas emissions that followed on light, medium and heavy duty vehicles.

The move will face public comments and legal challenges, but if it does get finalized, climate experts say it would be a game changer, but not in a good way. It has some asking. What's left of the EPA if you take the protection part out of it? My guest is Christine Todd Whitman. She's a former Republican governor of New Jersey and was the head of the EPA under then president George W. Bush. She's going to explain what the endangerment finding is and why she believes the Trump administration's environmental inaction could endanger Americans for generations to come. From CNN, this is One Thing. I'm David Rind. We're back in a bit.

Governor Whitman, what is this big scientific finding that the EPA wants to repeal?

Well, the endangerment finding is a finding that basically says that with all the tests of the scientific examination that's been done, that methane, carbon, those things are not good for your health, for human health.

As the largest U.N. Climate change conference in history kicked off in Copenhagen, the Obama administration declared carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions do pose a danger to the public's health and welfare, setting the stage for either Congress to take dramatic action to curb global warming or the Environmental Protection Agency could crack down on its own.

So they've said this is in fact what these factories are putting out if they're allowed to just go ahead and put out whatever they want. They are endangering the lives and health of the people who live near them as well as all across the country because you know Mother Nature doesn't care about geopolitical boundaries and air travels.

This long overdue finding cements 2009's place in history as the year when the United States government began seriously addressing the challenge of greenhouse gas pollution and easing the opportunity of clean energy reform.

So this is a real rollback. What it does is emasculates the Environmental Protection Agency. It keeps it from doing its job.

So this finding that basically said these greenhouse gasses are indeed harmful to human health, that was kind of the basis for rules that we've seen in the years since. Do I have that right?

Yes, yeah, that's right.

So why does the Trump administration want to get rid of that then? Are they arguing that greenhouse gasses don't pose a threat to human else?

This is a way big overreach. That's what their argument.

We do not have that power on our own to decide as an agency that we are going to combat global climate change because we give ourselves that power. We will follow the law. If Congress wants to amend Section 202 of the Clean Air Act and tell us... That they want us to be regulating the heck out of carbon dioxide, methane, and these other greenhouse gasses.

We'll follow the law. It's all about money, and it's all about the industries that have been pushing for this. Although interestingly enough, the Chamber of Commerce and a number of the industries didn't ask for this big kind of a rollback. What they wanted is some tweaks to the enforcement that was going on, but they had a huge win with this.

So this went even further than some of these groups were expecting.

Yes, it did.

My colleagues, Ellen Nilsen and Andrew Freedman, reported that part of the basis for this repeal is a report, which was authored by five climate contrarians. They make dubious claims in it, which really fly in the face of widely accepted science that climate change is presenting a danger to humans and that it's only been getting worse over time. What do you make of them using something like that to inform this proposal?

Well, I mean, you know, it's ridiculous. Instead of using any kind of balanced science and you'll have naysayers in any, if you put together a scientific panel, if you do it right, you'll have people that are not as enthusiastic about a rule as perhaps you think they should be, but this has been proven again and again and again, I'm mean, greenhouse gasses have been studied ad nauseam. And if you don't think, if we don't think that climate change is happening, you haven't been living in the real world recently.

Texas is grieving.

Grieving and bracing for more rain as urgent rescues are still underway for dozens who are missing after the devastating floods that ravaged central texas over the holiday weekend.

I mean, you look at the storms that we've had, you look the heat waves, the droughts.

Oh no!

The flooding.

You can hear just the fear there. People saying, oh my god, as they're watching an entire home being swept by them. The river reached 20 feet, its highest ever, and emergency crews conducted over 80 water rescues.

This is all due, and it's not all due exclusively, but climate change is exacerbating that. Climate change is making them much, much worse.

Well, so there's the scientific part of this, which was this finding that found greenhouse gasses are indeed harmful to human health. But there's also the legal side of this argument, right? And as I understand it, the Trump administration is basically saying the federal government doesn't have the legal authority to create regulations on the basis of this finding. What do you make of the legal argument part of those?

'That is just wrong. I mean, the Environmental Protection Agency, which, oh, by the way, was started by Richard Nixon, who signed the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act, their whole reason for being is to protect human health and the environment. That's all they care about. That's what they want to do. What you have here is an administration that wants to see no regulation, nothing to hold back companies from just doing whatever they want, manufacturers from doing whatever want. And the tragedy here is particularly for people in low-income communities and minority communities, that's where many of these factories are located. Many of these utilities are located because they didn't have the political power to push back. And we know this is going to really hurt their health long-term, particularly the children. And of course, EPA has the legal authority to do it. That's what Congress set up, gave EPA the legal priority. To promulgate regulations based on science that would protect human health and the environment.

So it sounds like you think that this basically goes against everything the EPA really stands for.

That does, without a question, it does. And the, the interesting thing is while being so blatant about it, going after the endangerment finding in many ways, it's going to end up in courts. It's going take a long time to get through, but what it's done is it's send a signal to utilities and to manufacturers, go ahead and do whatever you want, because this is going to be hung up in court and we're not going to enforce anything that actually. And the truth of the matter is they fired early on most of the enforcement officers, so there's not a lot of enforcement going on anyway.

So you think regardless of how this actually plays out, you could see companies kind of pushing the limit in the time in between.

'Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what the bad actors do now. There are a lot of good companies out there that won't, that will continue on the path. Many of the big companies have done things to reduce their emissions, reduce their water usage, to be good minders of the climate. It saves them money. But there are others who just will push for getting everything done that they possibly can as fast as they can, and never mind the long-term or even short-term impacts.

You worked under a Republican president. Most Republicans are no fan of government regulations. But when I hear President Trump and Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator say, "'We want the cleanest air, the cleanes water.'" I don't think anybody would disagree with that idea, but is it possible to do that without government regulations?

No, absolutely not. This is a classic case of, don't listen to what I say, watch what I do, because, you know, he's saying, want to make a beautiful environment. You can't do that if you're rolling back every regulation that protects people's health. I mean, we should be doing everything we can to slow our rate of increase of emissions into the atmosphere in order to start to try to slow down climate change. The climate's going to change. No question about it. We're not gonna stop it humans We're not solely responsible for it. The climate was changing forever, but we are putting such a stress on nature that nature can no longer accommodate what we're doing. And that's why we're finding ourselves in these situations where the temperature's going up. I mean, it's 100 degrees here today in New Jersey. We don't see 100 degree temperatures with high humidity. Really bad for a lot of people, particularly people in the cities that don't have a place to go or don't air conditioning. And it's not a question of you can't have a clean and green environment in a thriving economy. That's just wrong. We've proven that over and over again. We've seen the economy thrive for between 67 and 91 when we were really enforcing these regulations and the economy was thriving. And so it's just ridiculous to say you can have one or the other. In fact, I would argue that you can have a thriving, economy if people don't have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.

The Trump administration has made many, many moves to roll back regulations. There's a whole laundry list of stuff. But I'm also thinking about the messaging and how they talk about this stuff out in public. Lee Zeldin has called efforts to fight climate change a cult and a religion. Surely not everyone working for the EPA believes that, right?

'Not at all. I mean, they're on the other side. They are so discouraged now. You know, when I went in, people told me, okay, you're a Republican going into the Environmental Protection Agency. That's all tree-huggers. They're Democrats. They hate Republicans. They're gonna bury anything you wanna do. You can't get things done. What I found was a group of people who were absolutely committed to protecting human health and the environment. And while they may not have always agreed in the way we chose to do things, as long as they believe. That what we were doing was to protect human health and the environment, they were right there with you.

Do you have advice for staffers who are there right now, who may be feeling uneasy about working for, you know, under a president that is so hostile to climate science?

Well, it's so hard. I mean, what I want to say to them is hang in there, please. We need you because what we're seeing is that scientists, particularly the Office of Research and Development was done away with a week before last. And that's the group that does all the research on new things that are coming onto the market, new emissions to see what's healthy and what isn't healthy. We're not going to know those things anymore. And a lot of those scientists have been either fired or for a longer or just left because they're so They're so discouraged, but you need that institutional knowledge. And the irony is that many of them are being welcomed overseas, but England and France and other countries are saying, come here, we want you.

You've been a strong proponent of nuclear energy for a number of years now. President Trump has been touting nuclear as a way to power the vast amounts of data centers that will be needed to power artificial intelligence. So you two do a grand sum.

Yeah, I wish I saw more action along those lines as talk, but I haven't seen anything from a, even in the big, beautiful bill, they have language in there to put some money in, but I have seen anything actually happen. That's why I'm so skeptical of almost anything that they say because they say one thing and do the opposite or they say one thing and then do things that make it impossible to do what they say they're gonna do. It's a confusing time.

I mean, do you think any of these rollbacks could make it easier to get more nuclear off the ground?

No, I don't think so. I mean, small modular reactors are a whole different thing than the large nuclear reactors. This idea that it's regulations that have stopped so much of this is just not true because back when I first went into the Bush administration in 2001 was a time of rolling brownouts and they were afraid of blackouts in California. And the president stood up. The energy task force of which I was a part and the very first thing they said, well, it wasn't, it was environmental regulations that stopped the utilities from moving forward to bring on more power. My response was, okay, tell me what they are. Let me see what the proposals are and I'll move them to the top of the list. They'll still have to go through all the scrutiny, but we'll move. We'll make sure they move. They didn't give me a one, because it wasn't environmental regulation. It was an economic decision made by the utilities that they didn't want to on that power. And they thought they could manage without it.

I'm thinking back to what you said about when you first came on to the EPA and you were warned basically that, oh, it's just a bunch of tree huggers there. I mean, environmental issues have become so polarized, even more so since then. And it's like a totally different planet, pardon the pun, from when Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in the 70s. Like you said, did you think that we would get to this?

No, I never thought we'd have an administration that was so focused on doing away with any discussion of climate, any discussion of protecting the environment, that it disdained anyone who mentioned that kind of thing. It's just the way they've gone through. When Doge came in, they had key words, and they looked for anything that had those words in it.

What does that do, the fact that an administration won't even say the word climate change, let alone do any kind of proactive actions around it? What does it do to future generations who are no doubt gonna be grappling with this?

It endangers all of us. That's where the endangerment comes in. It also makes the United States an outlier with the rest of the world because certainly in the European countries and even in China, Japan and the Near East, they're taking this seriously. They're making moves, but we don't even show up at the conferences anymore and we used to be the conveners of these meetings.

The Trump administration, I don't think, is planning on even sending anyone to COP later this year.

No, they didn't, and they didn t, there was a meeting, what, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, international meeting, we didn t see anybody. Makes me furious. I've got seven grandchildren. I want to leave them a world better than what I founded and we are as a generation not doing that right now. I want them to have clean air to breathe. I want him to be able to go out in the woods and enjoy themselves. I want then to have clear water to drink and we're just giving that away. And it is saddening and frustrating that all the good work that's been done is being thrown out. I mean, as I say to people, look. Are some regulations, can they be changed? Yes, we should go back and look at regulations on a regular basis because we may have solved the problem. We may decide that it wasn't as much of a problem as we thought, so we can scale back a little bit. But to just say we're not gonna do anything and we're gonna look at science, we're going to listen to science, it's just irresponsible.

Well, Governor Whitman, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it.

Well, no problem. Thank you for caring about it.

In the days since Zeldin's announcement about the endangerment finding, Trump administration officials have rallied around the proposal. And on Thursday, the Department of Energy posted a tongue in cheek, but rather pointed meme on its social media accounts. It said, quote, she's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment. Now, the she in that post, a large, black, shiny piece of coal. That's it for us today. We're back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.