December 07, 2016 05:08 PM UTC

Polluters Trump Science with EPA Pick

• 4 Comments
• by: PKolbenschlag

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Do the media get whiplash? Just a day ago we saw none other than Al Gore, the chief apostle warning humanity of its reckless carbon-belching ways, saying vaguely complimentary things about his summons to the Trump Tower to speak with The Donald and First Daughter to be. Today we get a science-denying climate change villain put forth as nominee for Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

And while you can’t hide the sooty facts behind a pretty face, if media were a harp it might manage a tune of sorts. Played so well by the reality star, real estate magnate, alleged sexual predator cum leader of the Free World. Look there not here. Watch the pageantry, ignore the sleight of hand.

Here are the facts about trump’s EPA pick Scott Pruitt. Pruitt is Attorney General of Oklahoma, land of climate denialists, frackquakes, and fracking magnates.

According to his own website, Mr. Pruitt doesn’t much care for the agency he will be heading if the Senate confirms his appointment, calling him a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

Pruitt thinks that climate science is “far from settled” and expresses doubt climate change results from human activity. As AG and as chair of the Republican Attorneys General Association Pruitt has led the charge in defense of polluters, and against the agency he now seeks to lead in order to stop it from protecting the public’s interest.

The EPA was established under Republican President Richard Nixon, its authorities given to it by Congress (like via the Clean Air Act), and its mandates upheld by numerous court cases. A 2014 news release from Earthjustice, an intervenor in several of the carbon pollution Clean Air Act cases notes:

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA officially determined in 2009 that carbon pollution endangers public health and welfare, contributing (among other impacts) to heat waves that worsen smog and sea-level rise that threatens coastal communities.

In another case before the Supremes, the Roberts Court (again) acknowledged that the U.S. Congress has already given EPA the authority and a requirement to regulate carbon pollution, the news release continues.

The Clean Air Act’s “prevention of significant deterioration” permit program requires that new and modified major stationary polluters such as power plants and factories use the best available technology to control their air pollution.

Acting on this SCOTUS ruling however is, according to an opinion editorial by Mr. Pruitt in the Tulsa World  “governmental intimidation”.

“…Few things,” Pruitt writes, “could be more un-American” than abiding by the ruling of the United States Supreme Court requiring the EPA to follow its clear mandated authority to regulate carbon pollution.

Oklahoma, in addition to being home to Sen. Jim Inhofe who famously suggested that snow during winter is somehow evidence against climate change, is also home to a host of big name fracking and fossil fuel giants. This includes Continental Resources, Williams, and WPX Energy among others.

Fossil fuel interests have padded Mr. Pruitt’s campaign coffers with nearly one-third of one million dollars according to the National Institute of Money in State Politics.  That robust investment has clearly paid off–even before Mr. Pruitt’s promotion to devolve the agency he and his generous benefactors disdain. As the New York Times reported in December 2014:

“The email exchange from October 2011, obtained through an open-records request, offers a hint of the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found. Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.”

Four days after fossil fuelians held a lavish fundraiser for Mr. Pruitt at the Petroleum Club in Oklahoma City, he filed a new appeal in a case the companies had before the EPA the Times article goes on to report.

Although President-Elect Trump campaigned on saving the coal industry, Mr. Pruitt is a big backer of coal power’s main market foe: fracked natural gas. Pruitt has falsely claimed that the EPA found no evidence of groundwater contamination associated with this activity.

Mr. Pruitt is elected to represent the people of Oklahoma as Attorney General. In this capacity he gave a lift to Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm, immediately after Hamm announced he would chair Pruitt’s re-election campaign. Pruitt filed suit against the U.S. Department of Interior over its effort to protect the lesser prairie chicken. Hamm had noted that protecting this bird could knock out “some of the most promising land for oil and gas leases in the country,” the Times reported.

Predictably conservation groups are aghast. Just this month we have watched Gatlinburg burn, cities flood, drought grip half the nation. And Trump seems to be fiddling away on the media, almost literally as the nation burns.

As reporters watch agog for activity at Trump Tower like it is an episode of The Apprentice, The Donald is installing a cabinet that seems intent on undoing the very things it is established to protect.

National Security in the hands of a conspiracy nut. Education in the hands of an opponent of public schools. Housing in the hands of someone that begged not to be appointed to any position, who thinks the Egyptian pyramids were where the Old Testament Joseph stored grain.

And now the nation’s environmental laws, and perhaps our liveable planet’s future, could be put in the hands of a man who seems to take his marching orders from the very industries that profit the most from pollution.

President-Elect Trump is not “draining the swamp,” he is swamping the drain. The tragedy is that there is no outlet. The fouling of Trump’s cabinet is fouling our nest. We are all “downstream.”

Scott Pruitt and Trump’s other cabinet picks are out-of-step with Colorado priorities. Senators Gardner and Bennet need to look at the records of all these nominees carefully. For Pruitt the answer is clear, he must be rejected.