Whitehouse Statement at Hearing to Consider Lee Zeldin to Lead EPA

Washington, D.C.-U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, delivered the following opening statement at today's full committee hearing to consider the nomination of Lee Zeldin to serve as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Remarks as delivered.

Three things.

First, I'd like to let everyone know I like the Chairman. That's a good start.

In that context, I'd like to present her as the new chairman this gavel. It was made in 1956 of wood from the old West Virginia State House by the McKinley Vocational High School in Wheeling, West Virginia. It was presented to the then governor of West Virginia, Hulett Smith, who kept it upon his departure. He was term-limited out, and that was significant for, among other reasons, that it opened the office to the Chairman's father, Arch Moore. Madam Chair, may you bang it in good health.

Second, we have indeed worked well together. We have together successfully advanced nuclear energy reform; we have together successfully encouraged and expanded carbon capture; and the WRDA and the highway bills present big bipartisan opportunities for more work together. I even hope together we can revive permitting reform. So there is plenty of good opportunity.

And as I speak to bipartisan matters, let me also welcome Senator Curtis, our newly elected member of this Committee on the Republican side.

Last, I want to show everyone this map of my home state. The bright green parts are parts that are destined to flood, permanently underwater, lost to the sea in decades ahead.

Congressman Zeldin will be familiar with this risk from his home, Suffolk County. Fossil fuel pollution is the cause of that. It will change the map of my state, and it will do us crippling economic damage.

As I see it, we've been through three eras on climate.

First was the era of science.

And scientists-our headlights-did their job, predicting accurately what was going to happen. NASA scientists, academic scientists, IPCC scientists, Exxon scientists; they did their job.

Next came the era of politics, where it was our job to heed the warnings of science and head off those dangers. We failed, badly, and for the worst of all reasons: we succumbed to a massive, deliberate campaign of lies and corruption by the polluters themselves.

That failure ushers in now an era of consequences, consequences we should have headed off but didn't.

It's beginning, in creeping, seeping inflation, as goods become harder to grow, produce, and ship in upended weather patterns. It's upon us already, in forward-looking industries like insurance (good luck with property insurance in Florida and California).

The worst danger is systemic economic crashes. One, widely warned of in economic literature, is the "carbon bubble" bursting when the international oil cartel, or the massive government subsidies, cease propping up fossil fuel; and stranded assets lose all value; and the resulting shock cascades into the global economy.

The other, upon us already, is climate risk making property insurance unaffordable or unavailable, which in turn makes mortgages unavailable, which in turn crashes property values.

Remember this map. Before all that land went underwater, it would become uninsurable. And that is still-water flooding. Throw in big storms, and there is a whole coastal uninsurability crisis looming.

The chief economist for Freddie Mac predicted a coastal properties value crash cascading through the economy like the 2008 Great Recession. And that coastal danger is now matched by Western wildfire risk, like we are seeing right now in Los Angeles, launching the same insurance to mortgage to property values collapse.

Let's be clear: we are in this perilous place because a campaign of lies, and corruption, and pollution-delivered deliberately and at industrial scale by the fossil fuel industry-was accomplished through an armada of paid front groups.

And so we're clear, it's not just me warning of significant economic harms ahead. I will circulate to all colleagues-lucky you-this compendium of the published warnings for you and all of your staffs to review.

This threat is real.

If a sharp-eyed cabin boy on the Titanic had happened that night to see the iceberg ahead, you'd expect him to do whatever he could to fight his way to the captain's table in the fancy dining room and warn of the impending disaster. So please understand that map of my state and the sense of urgency that I feel.

I am confident that the Chairman would equal me in energy and determination for any similar dangers to her Mountain State.

And so it is through this lens of urgency that I approach this nomination hearing.

President Trump has called climate change a hoax.

While running for president, he met with fossil fuel industry executives and told them that they should give him a billion dollars in exchange for his reversing the rules that protect our air and water and limit the pollution that is driving climate change. And indeed, fossil fuel companies and executives lavished millions and millions of dollars on the Trump campaign and affiliated organizations.

These special interests now expect a return on their political investment. They expect a reversal of the already limited protections we have for our air and water. And make no mistake, not only would reversing these protections harm our air, water, public health, and climate, doing so would also cost Americans money. They would be forced to spend more to fuel their cars, to buy their groceries, to heat and cool their homes and businesses. That's money that would go directly from every hardworking American's wallet into the accounts of billionaire fossil fuel barons and giant oil companies.

The question then for Mr. Zeldin, here before us as President Trump's nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency, is simple: will he follow the science and the economics and protect our air, water, and climate? Or will he merely be a rubber stamp for looter and polluters who are setting the Trump agenda?

I must say that his role at polluter-funded organizations such as the America First Policy Institute and America First Works, his long list of Trump-affiliated consulting clients, and his anti-climate op-eds paid for by dark money organizations do not give me confidence that he will be an honest broker if confirmed to lead EPA.

I really want this to work. That is how high the stakes are. I am not here trying to score points. I am here trying to steer us away from what I see as a calamity ahead.

I will therefore be watching closely today to see if Congressman Zeldin is able to differentiate himself in any substantive ways from the polluter agenda and the economic crashes likely to ensue.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Here's to a productive relationship in this important Committee.

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