AFBF endorses Pruitt as head of EPA

Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, underscored the importance of federalism in US environmental policy and regulation, and criticized the agency he’s being tasked to run, at his confirmation hearing Wednesday.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) badgered Pruitt to reveal whether he helped raise fossil fuel industry money for the Rule of Law Defense Fund, which Pruitt served on from 2014 through December.

At the hearing before the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee, Pruitt conceded that human activity contributes “in some manner” to climate change.

Sanders retorted, “Really?? You are going to be head of an agency to protect the environment, and your personal feelings on climate change are immaterial?”.

“Oklahoma is way too used to this”.

Pruitt is expected to be confirmed. Instead, he reassigned his staff to focus on filing lawsuits against the federal agency he’s now selected to lead. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has said he will vote for Pruitt. Booker said. “In all of them except one, you filed those lawsuits joining with polluting companies that were also suing the EPA”. “Otherwise, people are going to think it’s not just the fox guarding the hen house, it’s the fox destroying the hen house”.

Pruitt let expire a 2003 agreement between Arkansas and Oklahoma aimed at reducing pollution from poultry waste and approved a new deal that called for more water-quality testing while agreeing not to institute any new enforcement actions or judicial proceedings against the industry. Pruitt’s disturbing denial of science and close financial ties to the fossil fuel industry make him completely unfit to hold the position- and would put the future of our planet and the lives of future generations at risk. “Scott Pruitt can not defend or support that which he does not believe in – a clean, healthy and safe environment for all”. He also took in almost $38,000 in campaign contributions from individuals connected to the poultry companies involved in the lawsuit.

The committee asked Pruitt how he’d lead the EPA in a way that avoided disasters like the Gold King mine wastewater spill near Silverton, Colorado, and the lead crisis in Flint, Michigan. NCBA last Friday hailed the US Supreme Court’s decision to grant a cert petition for the industry coalition lawsuit challenging EPA on the rule. Sullivan and and others sought assurances that the Oklahoma attorney general would do more – and continue the fight as the boss of EPA.

Asked by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., where EPA went wrong in the WOTUS rule, which is now stayed by the courts, Pruitt would not offer specifics. Mr. Pruitt is now halfway through his second term as Attorney General for the state of Oklahoma.

In contrast, fellow Republicans – like Gov. Mary Fallin, Sen.

Pruitt’s statement triggered alarm among climate experts and activists who already fear that the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress will go further than merely ending federal leadership on climate action and preemptively prevent cities and states from taking action on their own.

Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from MA, called Pruitt’s plan to review California’s waiver “troublesome” and said it represented a “double standard”.

“If any American dodged questions in a job interview the way Pruitt did [Wednesday], they wouldn’t get the job”. Pruitt referred to that as “the law of the land”. “There is nothing that I know that will cause a review at this point”.

Sanders, who ran unsuccessfully for president a year ago in part on an aggressive climate platform, repeatedly pushed Scott Pruitt to acknowledge the scientific consensus that human activity is the primary cause of recent climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases.