For more than three decades, it’s been almost invariably accepted in policymaking circles that fossil fuel use has to be reduced and then eliminated altogether if we are to save the planet. But the second Trump administration has restored reason and logic to the energy and environment debate. Every American who enjoys the life-giving benefits of fossil fuels today should be thankful.

Monday’s entertaining exchange between Environmental Protection Agency Director Lee Zeldin and Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, who seems to have never been hinged to reality, is a bright spot we’ve needed for some time. DeLauro, 83, behaved like a bratty child while Zeldin, 46, kept his cool and explained things to DeLauro as if she were his student.

“Section 202 of the Clean Air Act,” Zeldin said in response to DeLauro’s insistence that he was “abandoning” the EPA’s “duty to protect Americans” from global warming. “Where does it say anything about fighting global climate change?” 

DeLauro would have been better off to come back with a courtly “touche,” but instead screamed and wagged her finger at Zeldin after he silenced her by mentioning Supreme Court environmental cases she apparently knew nothing about.

The purple-haired DeLauro later said that Zeldin should maybe try drinking a cup of glyphosate, the active ingredient in weed killer Roundup.

In a town where hot air, witless politicians, and ruinous policies outweigh sensibility, Zeldin gives hope. Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that “Zeldin has fundamentally shifted both the EPA’s mission and the words he uses to describe it.”

Rather than harping on terms such as “global warming,” “energy efficiency,” “pollution,” “toxics,” and “public health,” Zeldin instead uses “energy dominance,” “American energy,” “economic growth,” “red tape,” and “cost of living,” the Times complained. The narrative swing is apparently part of Zeldin’s effort to oversee “a systematic unraveling of climate change protections.”

To the Times and the rest of the true believers, the climate grifters, the gullible and useful idiots, and the revolutionaries on the left, this is a tragedy.

But clear thinkers are delighted. The global warming tale has held sway for far too long without sufficient challenges at the policymaking level. At least $16 trillion has been wasted on a phantom problem, students have been indoctrinated into a cult, and extremism in the defense of the environment is a vice. It’s past time to be free of the chains of climate tyranny.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board