Trump picks EPA critic Scott Pruitt to lead agency

Trump has selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency – and he’s an ally of the fossil fuel industry and a climate change denier.

Environmental groups on Wednesday sharply criticized Trump’s expected selection of Pruitt, saying his anti-EPA litigation and rejection of the scientific consensus about climate change make him unfit to lead the agency tasked with overseeing compliance with federal clean-air and clean-water laws.

Environmental groups were quick to condemn the decision as “appalling”, with one comparing it to “putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop”.

And according to Fox News, Pruitt stands in opposition to the EPA’s abuse of the Clean Water Act, which has been a known method for the agency to disregard property rights of United States citizens.

Meanwhile, House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said “the head of the EPA can not be a stenographer for the lobbyists of polluters and Big Oil”, in reference to Mr Pruitt.

Donald Trump is now considering several candidates with close ties to the fossil fuel industry for the role of US Secretary of Energy.

This doesn’t effect Pruitt’s stance on the environment, but it’s worth taking a quick look at some of his other controversial views.

Pruitt also fought efforts by attorney generals in other states to press ExxonMobil for information about whether the company failed to disclose material information about climate change, calling such efforts “governmental intimidation” of the oil giant.

In an opinion piece in an Oklahoma newspaper this year, he wrote that he believes the debate over global warming is “far from settled” and that scientists continue to disagree on the issue.

Not to be outdone by that foreboding forecast, Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior advisor for President Obama, suggested that Pruitt heading the EPA “is an existential threat to the planet”.

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump pledged to “cancel” USA involvement in the Paris climate agreement, a landmark global accord that attempts to halt the effects of climate change. It seemed like he was determined to dismantle President Obama’s attempts toward countering climate change.

Representing his state as attorney general since 2011, Pruitt has repeatedly sued the EPA.

Donald Trump’s nomination of a climate change sceptic to run the Environmental Protection Agency and a fast-food restaurant tycoon opposed to higher minimum wages to be the next labour secretary has put the USA president-elect on a collision course with environmentalists and trade unions.

During his time as Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt even launched a number of lawsuits against the EPA to block federal plans for emission controls.