Big Oil has taken over the Environmental Protection Agency.
Last Tuesday, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin made official his plan to overturn a 16-year-old ruling allowing the government to protect the country and economy from the greenhouse gas pollution fueling the climate crisis. The announcement effectively gifts the largest and most dangerous polluters in the country the right to unregulated emissions. People around the world will be harmed for generations.
It is truly Orwellian to see the EPA—an agency signed into existence by Richard Nixon to protect the public from environmental degradation—divesting itself of the responsibility to address the ravages of the climate crisis during a summer of extreme weather and following the hottest year in recorded history.
But it is not surprising.
Zeldin has made no secret of his ambitions to use the EPA as a means for deregulation and driving “a dagger straight into the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring back auto jobs to the U.S. and more.” He is of course wrong on every point.
Prices are up partially due to the market his bosses have created. Random trade wars have caused businesses to charge more and others to consider shutting down entirely. Energy production was largely “unleashed” at the start of the year. The U.S. produced more crude oil than any nation at any other time in history while renewable energy production grew to record levels simultaneously. An “American vehicle manufacturing renaissance” was under way thanks to investments from the Inflation Reduction Act and resulted in a 34-year peak in vehicle-manufacturing jobs. The “Endangerment Finding” was considered settled law, and countless innovations arose as a result. This move by Zeldin puts all of that at risk.
The more-than 10,000 businesses committed to science-based emissions reductions should be outraged. These businesses will be left between government mandates—or lack thereof—and market momentum. Corporate leaders are already overwhelmingly invested in climate programs because they’re good business and build resilience, but an erratic regulatory environment throws those practices into question.
Performative orders like this leave businesses scrambling to understand what it means for them. Add in legal challenges to the directive, and businesses will be stuck in limbo as cases play out in court. While the administration frames this as a rebuke against an ideology, companies worldwide will feel the effects.
Deregulation to this level will only add to the skyrocketing costs caused by the climate crisis on our collective bottom line. Whether a company has emissions targets or not, extreme weather disasters are increasingly affecting more businesses. The Census Bureau found that nearly one out of 10 businesses experienced monetary loss because of extreme weather. In total, reporting businesses lost 32% of revenue due to the events. In 2024 alone we suffered $182.7 billion in economic damage from 27 individual billion-dollar climate disasters. More than 1,500 people lost their lives in climate disasters in the past three years.
Yet the Trump administration would have us believe the greenhouse gases that directly contribute to intensifying storms and fires do not pose a danger to the public.
Taken in tandem with the targeted evisceration of the renewable energy industry, Zeldin is indeed “driving a dagger”— twisting it in the back of years of stability, investments, science, facts, progress, and protections for businesses and people that deserve clean air, clean water, and some degree of security.
So who benefits? The administration’s powerful fossil fuel benefactors. For them, a reversal that undermines years of hard work, investment and time from the public and private sector to protect us counts as a win.
The simplest response to the turmoil this policy will cause is to continue doing the work. If you’ve made climate commitments, don’t back down. The widespread corporate “greenhushing”—or when businesses are afraid to reaffirm their bottom-line-driven climate action policies for fear of drawing the administration’s ire—must end. To compete globally and create long-term stability, we must speak out. We are past the point of corporate “optics.” The climate crisis will worsen whether Zeldin and the Trump administration believe it or not. No executive order, law or statement can wish it away.
For our part at Patagonia, we will stay the course. We will continue to invest in decarbonization. It is good for business, customers and community. It is also staying true to our purpose.
A committed corporate sector can prove this administration’s invitation to irresponsible behavior will not undermine commitments to shareholders, employees and customers. Our businesses and communities depend on it. If anything, this moment must become a call to the business community to show Zeldin and the federal government just how powerful the market can be.
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