Trump is said to choose strident fossil fuel ally Scott Pruitt to head EPA

Transition
Dec. 7, 2016, 12:29 p.m. reporting from washington

Trump is said to choose strident fossil fuel ally Scott Pruitt to head EPA

Evan Halper

President-elect Donald Trump has picked Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency, signaling that he intends to make good on his vow to aggressively disassemble President Obama’s landmark effort to fight climate change.

The choice of Pruitt was reported by several media outlets citing unnamed transition officials.

Pruitt is a climate change skeptic and longtime ally of the fossil-fuel industry spearheading the 28-state effort in federal courts to block Obama’s signature climate change program, the Clean Power Plan. As EPA administrator, Pruitt cannot cancel the plan, but he can refuse to defend it against the litigation for which he was a key architect.

His knowledge of the inner workings of the case and experience as a litigator who has challenged several Obama administration policies, including Obamacare and the president’s executive actions on illegal immigration, make him well-positioned to roll back the climate plan.

“Pruitt has a strong conservative record as a state prosecutor and has demonstrated a familiarity with laws and regulations impacting a large energy resource state,” Trump transition spokesman Jason Miller told reporters earlier Wednesday, when he announced Pruitt would be meeting with Trump in New York.

Large environmental groups and some Democrats immediately called on the Senate to reject Pruitt’s confirmation.

“He is a climate science denier who, as attorney general for the state of Oklahoma, regularly conspired with the fossil fuel industry to attack EPA regulations,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, citing a 2014 New York Times investigation that found that energy lobbyists drafted letters that Pruitt would send to federal agencies and Obama outlining the hardships of federal regulations.

Pruitt has been outspoken in his criticism of the mainstream scientific consensus that the planet is warming at an alarming rate and governments need to act aggressively to reverse it. “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” Pruitt co-wrote in an article for the National Review in May.

The choice of Pruitt suggests that Trump is not wavering in his vow to undo the Obama climate legacy, despite comments to reporters and a well-publicized meeting this week with former Vice President Al Gore that suggested Trump was keeping an open mind.

The people Trump has picked to put his environmental agenda in place are almost universally opposed to the policies that mainstream climate scientists say are necessary to curb dangerous planetary warming.