At the moment, Hurricane Irma is poised to come right up the center of Florida like a big old rusty catheter. Out on the ocean blue, Jose has beefed up to Category 4 status and, in the Gulf of Mexico, Katia, the runt of the current litter, is up to a Category 2 her own self. Each of these storms possesses an almost unimaginable destructive potential. They are the second, third, and fourth such storms of the past three weeks. Parts of the Houston area won’t be inhabitable for months. Something very unusual must be going on, isn’t that right, EPA chief Scott Pruitt? From CNN (via KTLA 5):

“Here’s the issue,” Pruitt told CNN in a phone interview. “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm; versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.” He continued: “What we need to focus on is access to clean water, addressing these areas of superfund activities that may cause an attack on water, these issues of access to fuel. … Those are things so important to citizens of Florida right now, and to discuss the cause and effect of these storms, there’s the… place (and time) to do that, it’s not now.”

Remember in the aftermath of a mass shooting about how it’s never time to talk about gun control? In those various incidents, the NRA at least accepts the fact that people actually were shot to death.

The official position of this administration—and the lifelong opinion of Scott Pruitt—is that the climate crisis is at best an exaggeration and at worst, a Chinese hoax. It is never going to be time for Scott Pruitt to talk about the climate crisis because that’s not what the people who have financed his career pay him to talk about. Climate denial already is a synonym for mass murder. The only question is the body count.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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