🏭EPA Administrator Zeldin eliminates Clean Power Plan in regulatory rollback

The Supreme Court required EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants endangering public health. Lee Zeldin's June 11 rollbacks eliminate Obama-era limits while maintaining the technical legal framework, effectively nullifying climate protection without directly challenging the Court's endangerment finding.

Administrator Zeldin claims artificial intelligence and cloud computing will consume 10% of American electricity within a decade. The EPA granted 47 companies mercury exemptions using this rationale, demonstrating how emerging technology needs provide legal cover for extending fossil fuel infrastructure past retirement dates.

Mercury monitoring rollbacks eliminate regulatory compliance expenses for coal companies while increasing healthcare costs for communities downwind of power plants. The savings flow to private shareholders while the costs—childhood development problems, respiratory disease, premature death—burden public health systems and families.

The 800 NOAA scientists laid off in February represented decades of climate research expertise and weather forecasting capability. Chris Wright's dismissal of climate change as a side effect combines with staff reductions to eliminate the institutional knowledge base that supports environmental policy development.