Lee Zeldin’s environmental vision for America might not include holding businesses accountable for poisoning its citizens, but he is declaring war on one evil culprit—gas-saving vehicle features. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is going after the stop-start technology installed in most vehicles. The tech, introduced during the Obama administration, shuts off a driver’s car while at a complete stop in order to save gas.
“Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy,” Zeldin wrote via X Monday. “EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it.”
On one hand, it seems no one has yet to inform Zeldin that you can manually turn this feature off yourself by clicking a button in your vehicle. It is unclear if Zeldin also needs to be informed about the existence of other new technologies such as the rearview camera and the mysterious Bluetooth feature as well.
“For the environment.”
On the other hand, Zeldin and Donald Trump’s administration cannot simply flip a switch—even one they can find—to get rid of this feature. The Obama administration provided incentives for car manufacturers to install the environmentally friendly feature on vehicles, but removing that incentive does not mean that the vehicle industry will stop making green features on their latest models.
And while the former New York House representative heads a department whose name suggests that the goal is to protect the environment, Zeldin seems more fixated on how annoying the gas-saving feature is than its positive environmental impacts.
Stop-start technology eliminated approximately 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually as of 2023, per the Battery Council International.
Of course, environmental impact has not been a large deciding factor for Zeldin. Despite saying in his confirmation hearing that he absolutely believes climate change is real, soon after taking over the role he penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal bragging about his plans of “driving a dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”
And he has been doing just that.
As Zeldin attempts to overhaul the EPA, resulting in restructuring and staffing cuts to “Reagan-era” levels, states are bracing to be left in the dark when it comes to caring for their people and their environment as well as the impact it will have on scientific research.
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Early on the job, Zeldin cut hundreds of grants across the country that funded projects designed to help those most in need.
Indiana, which has some of the most polluted waterways in the country and the largest number of toxic coal ash ponds, stands to be greatly impacted by Zeldin’s EPA cuts. West Virginia has been crying out for help after they lost funding for a grant meant to address “forever chemicals” present in their drinking water. The $1 million grant was frozen despite a 2022 study showing that dangerous chemicals exceeded safe limits in their community’s water.
“It’s been a kind of multiyear process to even get the resources to be able to fund these plans,” Maria Russo, a policy specialist at West Virginia Rivers Coalition, told the West Virginia Times.
“And right now, without it, we’re back at square one.”
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