Pruitt at EPA confirmation: Human activity a factor in global warming

His exchange with Senator Bernie Sanders was like watching a fever dream. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and other members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works during his confirmation hearing.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency is set to outline a vision for scaling back the office’s reach and putting states on the front line as the primary stewards of the air and water. Pruitt’s record makes it clear that he is the wrong choice to lead the EPA.

In 2012, Trump declared global warming was a hoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make USA manufacturing non-competitive”.

But, Pruitt said he sees his job as simply enforcing regulations approved by Congress.

Pruitt wants to dismantle numerous environmental programs that we rely on here.

The EPA is the primary environmental regulator in the US and is required by law to keep Americas air and water clean and free of toxic chemicals and other pollutants. “A regulator should not be for or against any sector of our economy”.

“I believe the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activity’s impact on the climate is subject to more debate, on whether the climate is changing or whether human activity contributes to it”, Pruitt said Wednesday in a tense exchange with Vermont Sen.

While he has moderated that position over the past year to acknowledge that human activity has some connection to climate change, he repeatedly floated the idea of dramatically curbing EPA power.

Pruitt told lawmakers Wednesday that he “does not believe that climate change is a hoax”.

“There’s a lot of anger, even fear of this agency across many parts of the country”, said Sen.

During the hearing, Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of OR showed a blown-up image of a letter Pruitt sent to the current EPA administrator several years ago opposing regulations limiting emissions from the energy sector. Do you believe that climate change is caused by the emission, by carbon emissions? Pruitt also sued over the EPA’s recent expansion of water bodies regulated under the Clean Water Act. “Do all of the things he said during the campaign just go away?” “Your state’s having a record breaking number of earthquakes… if that’s the kind of EPA administrator you’re going to be, you’re not going to get my vote”.

Questions will likely come up at the hearing on how Pruitt will handle rules at issue in this litigation, and whether he will recuse himself from involvement in these matters. Early in the Reagan administration, EPA administrator Anne Gorsuch slashed the agency’s enforcement budget by 45 percent and allowed voluntary compliance by industries. In response to the Carbon dioxide issue, the EPA administrator is constrained by statutes.”.

No, he didn’t really want to say much about how much money fossil fuel interests have secretly donated to dark money groups associated with him, or whether he will recuse himself from pending lawsuits against the EPA in which he is a plaintiffs’ attorney of record.

Pruitt said he would leave those decisions to the EPA’s counsel. “If directed to do so, I will do so in those cases.”.

Pruitt, who has served as Oklahoma Attorney General since 2010, has been a relentless critic of President Obama’s climate strategy, the “Clean Power Plan”, and has sued the EPA. Still, the levels remain far above the state standard and the decline in pollution has been slower than some hoped.

Inhofe and Oklahoma’s other senator, James Lankford, introduced Pruitt. “There is a legal obligation presently for the administration to respond through proper regulations.”.