It’s an eco-Worriers nightmare. Donald Trump appointed the man who’s been suing the EPA as its new chief. Scott Pruitt The Oklahoma Attorney General has been a leading figure in working to stop Obama’s EPA’s Clean Power Plan, an executive order that tried to circumvent Congress.
Trump heard Al Gore’s best arguments on Monday and acted accordingly.
Pruitt obviously knows the worst flaws of the EPA and in detail. He might even be able to get the EPA to tackle real environmental problems instead of fake ones. Who could be better? (Marc Morano, Nigel Farage? Hard to say).
Donald Trump will name Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, an ardent opponent of President Barack Obama’s measures to curb climate change, as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a Trump transition team official said on Wednesday, a choice that enraged green activists and cheered the oil industry.
Trump’s choice of Pruitt fits neatly with the Republican president-elect’s promise to cut back the EPA and free up drilling and coal mining, and signals the likely rollback of much of Obama’s environmental agenda.
Since becoming the top prosecutor for the major oil- and gas-producing state in 2011, Pruitt, 48, has launched multiple lawsuits against regulations put forward by the agency he is now poised to lead, suing to block federal measures to reduce smog and curb toxic emissions from power plants. — Globe and Mail
The EPA has 17,000 employees and an $8b budget that costs the US hundreds of billions more in regulatory burdens. Pruitt has his work cut out for him to change the culture of that behemoth.
No point pandering to the namecallers
In the arsenal of insults there’s nothing more to toss. Anyone Trump appointed would be called the planet-wrecking devil incarnate, so Trump might as well install someone really worthwhile.
Predictably, on twitter at #EPA, people who want to look like they care about the environment have run out of new names.
James Delingpole thinks it’s great news for the environment and does a nice summary of past EPA “stars”
Probably the worst were Obama’s appointments. First, was Lisa Jackson who had previously had a disastrous stint as commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
Here is what former colleagues had to say in a report on her performance:
“DEP employees describe Ms Jackson as employing a highly politicized approach to decision-making that resulted in suppression of scientific information, issuance of gag orders and threats against professional staff members who dared to voice concerns.”
An ideal choice, then, by Obama to run the most powerful environmental regulatory agency in the U.S., with 17,000 employees under her.
Jackson’s reign of terror at the EPA – in which she lived up to her early promise by helping to cripple the U.S. coal industry, delay Keystone Pipeline and have a harmless trace gas (carbon dioxide) re-branded an environmental hazard – only came to an end after it scandal in which she was found to have been using an illegal separate email account – Richard Windsor – in order to elude Freedom of Information regulations.
After Jackson, came Gina McCarthy another green zealot – chosen for her political correctness and passionate belief in climate change rather than her scientific expertise. On her watch, the water at Flint, Michigan was contaminated with lead, an EPA senior official (whom McCarthy had supervised) was charged with stealing nearly $900,000 of government funds, and the disastrous, expensive, ineffective, pointless Clean Power Plan.
*Edited: The post originally named Don van der Vaart instead of Scott Pruitt, who was on the shortlist. Fixed.