“Climate Hawks” Outraged at Trump’s Plan to Eradicate the Environmental Protection Agency

Here’s something I got from the people at Climate Hawks, a group that, as its name suggests, adamantly supports climate change mitigation.  The only thing one can say about the appointment of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the EPA is that it’s totally consistent with Trump’s strategy to destroy most departments of the federal government by tapping avowed enemies of each of these organizations to run them.  For anyone wondering how we’re going to keep the air clean, the water safe, ensure our entire environment from becoming a cesspool, I wish I had a good answer for you, but I don’t.  

(Last week) Trump’s fossil-fueled EPA administrator Scott Pruitt took the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual right-wing DC lovefest, saying those who want to destroy the EPA are “justified” in their beliefs. As cherry trees blossomed outside in record warmth, Pruitt went on to state that “we don’t know” how much of an impact that humans had on climate change. His claim is not simply scientifically inaccurate—it’s immoral. The hundreds of billions of tons of greenhouse pollution dumped into the atmosphere threaten all of our lives—and it’s the EPA’s job to protect us, not the polluters.

It’s no surprise that Pruitt wants to destroy his own agency. He sued the EPA thirteen times during his time as the Attorney General of Oklahoma, at the direction of the oil and gas industry. In fact, he lied under oath to the U.S. Senate in his confirmation hearing, falsely stating he never used his personal email for official business. Now thousands of emails of correspondence between Pruitt and polluters have been released by judicial order—and there are thousands more coming—that show that Pruitt used both official and personal email accounts to do the bidding of Devon Energy and the Koch brothers.

Scott Pruitt and the rest of Trump’s climate-denying cabinet must be held accountable. This climate denier’s nomination was confirmed by nearly every Republican senator, with the help of Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia (coal) and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota (Bakken crude). We need to keep building our indivisible and uncompromising climate movement to keep Trump’s deniers in check. We need to ensure that oil-soaked climate deniers like Pruitt are hounded out of office. And we need to replace any elected official who stands in our way so that we have a government for the people, not for Exxon and the Koch brothers.