WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the E.P.A. itself.
Mr.
Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle
against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies, actions that fit with the
president-elect’s comments during the campaign. Mr. Trump has criticized
the established science of human-caused global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the Paris accord
committing nearly every nation to taking action to fight climate
change, and attacked Mr. Obama’s signature global warming policy, the
Clean Power Plan, as a “war on coal.”
Mr. Pruitt has been in lock step with those views.
“Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” he wrote in National Review
earlier this year. “That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms,
public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with
threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”
A meeting on Monday between the president-elect and former Vice President Al Gore
may have given environmental activists a glimmer of hope that Mr. Trump
was moderating his campaign stance. Mr. Trump told New York Times
editors and reporters that he does “think there is some connectivity” between human activity and a warming planet.
With the choice of Mr. Pruitt, that hope will have faded.
“During
the campaign, Mr. Trump regularly threatened to dismantle the E.P.A.
and roll back many of the gains made to reduce Americans’ exposures to
industrial pollution, and with Pruitt, the president-elect would make
good on those threats,” said Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research and advocacy organization.
“It’s
a safe assumption that Pruitt could be the most hostile E.P.A.
administrator toward clean air and safe drinking water in history,” he
added.
Mr. Pruitt, 48, is a hero to conservative activists, one of a group of Republican attorneys general who formed an alliance with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda. Fossil fuel interests greeted Mr. Trump’s selection with elation.
“Attorney
General Scott Pruitt has long been a defender of states’ rights and a
vocal opponent of the current administration’s overreaching E.P.A.,”
said Laura Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean
Coal Electricity, which works on behalf of the coal industry. “Mr.
Pruitt will be a significant voice of reason when it comes to energy and
environmental regulations.”
Source: NYTimes Posted By Vindication Recovery Services
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