Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, will be the opening speaker at a conference next month sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a group that rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, the organization has announced.
President Trump routinely mocks climate change as a “hoax” and his administration has rolled back protections for air and water, and has tried to give up the power to regulate greenhouse gases. Yet scientists and one former Republican E.P.A. administrator still expressed alarm at the idea of the nation’s chief environmental official speaking at an event for a research organization that argues there is “no such thing” as climate-driven floods, hurricanes and extreme heat.
The speech, critics said, risks bestowing the credibility of the federal government on the fringe theories that the group espouses.
“The choices that an administrator makes, where to go and who to talk to, is very significant,” said William K. Reilly, who served as administrator of the E.P.A. under the first President George Bush.
“The only reason to talk to a group like this one he’s going to talk to is to call them out and correct them and remind them that E.P.A. is a science-based agency,” Mr. Reilly said.
Brigit Hirsch, a spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin, said in a statement that the administrator “takes the opportunity to speak before a wide variety of ideologically different groups and individuals to promote the agenda of the Trump E.P.A.”
When it comes to climate change, “the era of E.P.A. as a vehicle for radical ideology is over,” Ms. Hirsch said. She added that the Trump administration “has returned the agency to focus on fulfilling its statutory obligations of protecting human health and the environment, backed by gold standard science, not doomsday models designed to scare the public into compliance.”
Since the E.P.A. was created in 1970, its mission has been to protect human health and the environment. Mr. Zeldin has introduced a new set of five priorities, most of which are departures from the agency’s core responsibilities. One references maintaining “clean land, air and water for every American.” But the others include pursuing “energy dominance,” a Trump administration doctrine to maximize production of fossil fuels; speeding the approval of new projects like oil and gas pipelines; bolstering the automobile industry; and a pledge to “make the United States the Artificial Intelligence capital of the world.”
The Heartland Institute, which is based in Schaumburg, Ill., describes itself as a think tank that promotes free-market solutions to social and economic problems. The organization does not disclose its funder list, and its website says most of its funding comes from individual donors and foundations. In the past, it has received financial support from oil and gas interests as well as the Mercer Family Foundation, a donor to conservative causes.
The group argues that the burning of fossil fuels is not driving a crisis and that a warming planet may bring benefits. The director of the Heartland Institute’s environmental center, H. Sterling Burnett, has claimed “there is no physical evidence to support the theory humans are causing a dangerous global warming.”
Jim Lakely, executive vice president of the Heartland Institute and the organization’s spokesman, did not respond to requests for comment.
In 2023, the Heartland Institute sent copies of its book “Climate at a Glance” to thousands of science teachers across the nation to provide them with “the data to show the earth is not experiencing a climate crisis.”
Those assertions contradict decades of established science. The evidence for climate change spans from the Keeling Curve, an upward-sweeping graph that documents the steep rise in carbon dioxide, to modern satellite data, which unequivocally show man-made emissions are driving rapid warming.
In recent weeks, the Heartland Institute has applauded Mr. Zeldin for repealing a 2009 scientific conclusion that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. That determination, known as the endangerment finding, formed the legal basis for the E.P.A. to regulate emissions from cars and trucks, power plants and more. The move has already drawn legal challenges from states, cities and environmental groups.
The organization announced on Thursday that Mr. Zeldin would open its 16th annual conference in Washington. The two-day event, starting April 8, is billed as an international climate change conference, but the organization said it would feature speakers “who challenge the narrative that the world faces a ‘climate crisis.’”
Mr. Zeldin is not the first E.P.A. administrator to address the organization. During Mr. Trump’s first term, Scott Pruitt, who was the E.P. A. chief at the time, sent a video message to the Heartland Institute’s “America First Energy Conference” in Houston, celebrating U.S. fossil fuel resources and promoting energy deregulation.
But since Mr. Trump returned to the White House last year, he has taken an even more aggressive approach on climate policy. His agencies are repealing virtually all greenhouse gas regulations, eliminating institutions that produce climate science and defunding projects to protect communities from the consequences of climate change.
“Lee Zeldin headlining the Heartland Institute conference is not surprising, and it’s emblematic of an administration that panders to an ideology of climate change denial,” said David Ho, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, called it “disappointing” to see the agency align with a group that rejects climate science.
“I would note that, because of its economic implications, climates science has been one of the most scrutinized and reproduced area of science in history, and it has held up remarkably well under that scrutiny,” Dr. Dessler said, adding, “That alone means it deserves to be taken far more seriously than the E.P.A. appears to be taking it.”
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
The post E.P.A. Chief to Headline Event by Group That Says There’s No Climate Crisis appeared first on New York Times.
