Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state is an ongoing guessing game, but it’s his choice of Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency that’s making headlines this week.
That’s because Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, has joined other states to sue the EPA over its controversial Clean Power Plan and has stated his skepticism of man-made climate change, naturally upsetting liberal Democrats and environmental activists.
Among people named so far in the Trump administration, The Washington Post explained this week, Pruitt is the third who has “key philosophical differences with the missions of the agencies they have been tapped to run.”
The story went on – and on – to point out how Pruitt is an “ally” of the energy industry, and has criticized the EPA and its “unwarranted regulation and systematic overreach.”
Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, declared that Pruitt’s nomination must be blocked “for the sake of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the planet we will leave our children.”
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.”
Liberals are really upset because Pruitt understands what is happening with climate regulations, says Climate Depot head Marc Morano, a skeptic of man-made climate change.
“He realizes is has nothing to do with carbon dioxide or the environment – rather regulatory control and ideology,” says Morano. “And he’s actually compared the EPA climate regulations to a ‘proverbial gun to the head.'”
Writing about Pruitt at The Weekly Standard, Fred Barnes opines that liberals are in a “tizzy” over Pruitt – and not because he’s ignorant of the EPA and its rules and regulations.
“Their problem is that he’s too qualified,” Barnes writes. “He knows environmental law as well or better than they, particularly its limits.”
Since Pruitt comes from a major energy-producing state, observes Tom Borelli of Conservative Review, the attorney general naturally understands energy sources such as natural gas and oil production from fracking. But he also supports the coal industry, too, an industry loathed by environmentalists that has been decimated by the Obama administration.
“It’s great news for the economy,” Borelli says of Pruitt heading the EPA. “I think it’s great news for coal workers.”
—-
Copyright American Family News. Reprinted with permission.
Recent Comments