By Valerie Volcovici
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday said he believes climate change is real and a threat but that the agency he is poised to oversee is just authorized, not required, to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.
Former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, speaking at his Senate confirmation hearing, said a 2007 decision by the Supreme Court gave the agency statutory authority to regulate the heat-trapping greenhouse gas but did not obligate the EPA to take action.
Zeldin told the hearing that he believes climate change is real, a departure from his predecessors who led the EPA during the first Trump administration from 2017 to 2020 and from Trump himself, who has repeatedly called climate change a hoax.
"I believe that climate change is real," he told the committee, but did not respond directly to questions about whether the U.S. needs to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, a major driver of carbon emissions.
The outgoing administration of President Joe Biden had prioritized climate policies and tied them to economic growth and job creation. Trump has vowed to roll back the Biden administration's climate-focused agenda, including EPA regulations aimed at slashing carbon dioxide, methane and other emissions from cars, power plants and other industrial sources.
Zeldin said he favored an approach that favors all energy sources and stressed in his opening statement that the incoming administration has a mandate from American voters to protect the environment, but without harming economic growth.
"The American people elected President Trump last November in part due to serious concerns about upward economic mobility and their struggle to make ends meet," Zeldin said. "We can, and we must, protect our precious environment without suffocating the economy."
Zeldin touted his record focusing on protecting the Long Island Sound as well as his support for bipartisan legislation to clean up ocean plastic.
The Republican, who represented a section of New York's Long Island, often voted against legislation on green issues including a measure to stop oil companies from price gouging.
In his final year in Congress in 2022, Zeldin earned a 5% rating by the League of Conservation Voters scorecard that tracks the voting records of members of Congress on environmental issues.
Throughout the hearing, Democratic senators pressed Zeldin on climate change and sought assurances that he would not cave in to pressure from fossil fuel and other industry groups that want to ease regulations on air and water.
Watchdog groups have flagged that Zeldin's consulting firm had been paid to write op-eds on environmental policies for fossil fuel companies and interests.
Zeldin rejected the suggestion that he could be influenced by special interests.
"There is no person who has every provided any level of support to me...who has any special influence with me," he said.
One of the top targets of industry groups and Trump is the EPA's clean vehicle rules, which aim to cut tailpipe emissions by 50% from 2026 levels by 2032 and encourage the shift to more electric vehicles, as well as the agency's approval of California's even stricter clean car mandate.
When asked whether he would move to rescind those rules, Zeldin said it was too early to say.
"I plan on following my obligations under the law to ensure that throughout my tenure, if confirmed as EPA Administrator, that I never prejudge outcomes heading into that process," he said.