The ARI petition: Putting Musk and Trump on the eve of the challenge of the EPA and how he has already done so

The ARI petition argues that with proper mechanisms, Musk will be an asset for helping the Trump administration navigate the development of this transformational technology. ARI is aiming to get 10,000 signatures on the petition.

Musk has been a leading critic of OpenAI, a company he cofounded but more recently has distanced himself from and made into an opponent. He signed on to a letter calling for a hiatus on the development of more advanced generativeAI models in order to put in place safeguards. Critics say his stances are largely self-interested, however, since he also runs his own AI company, xAI.

“With proper guardrails in place, his unique combination of technical expertise and safety advocacy could be a valuable asset in developing responsible AI governance,” Robusto writes.

Environmental advocates are concerned about Trump’s plans at the EPA. “We can meet demand for data centers without scrapping EPA rules to clean up dirty power plants and cut climate pollution,” Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said in a statement responding to Zeldin’s appointment. “We count on the EPA to protect clean air and water and public health and that’s what we’ll hold the next administrator accountable to do.”

“The two things we know for certain are that Trump has tried to cripple EPA in the past and he has tasked his new pick to head EPA with rolling back dozens of clean air and water regulations,” Jeremy Symons, senior adviser to Environmental Protection Network and former EPA climate adviser, said in an email to The Verge. Zeldin needs to be held accountable for his vote against the EPA because there is widespread and bipartisan support for the EPA to protect air and water.

During an interview with Joe Rogan on October 25th, Trump complained about environmental impact studies that he said made it easier to complete his own building projects in the past. “The environmental stuff was always horrible. He said that a project could take a decade to slow down. It costs more to do things that are eco-friendly.

“While we did not always see eye to eye with Rep. Zeldin, we did work to find common ground on several issues during his time in office,” Julie Tighe, New York League of Conservation Voters president, said in an email. Zeldin was opposed to offshore drilling during Trump’s previous administration.

Some environmental advocates are holding out hope that they’ll be able to salvage long-standing environmental rules with Zeldin, rather than seeing a worst-case scenario outlined in Project 2025 that would all but dismantle the EPA. Zeldin voted to cut the EPA’s budget by 25 percent, which could have meant the loss of 3,200 staff positions at the agency.

Data centers have become a hot-button environmental issue because they use more energy when being used for training artificial intelligence. Until recently, gains in energy efficiency have allowed data center power use to stay relatively flat. Data center power demand could grow by 160 percent by the year 2030 due to diminishing popularity of artificial intelligence. There are more data centers in the US, and their appetite for electricity could cause more pollution in the power sector.