1k SHARES Facebook Twitter Whatsapp Pinterest Reddit Print Mail Flipboard

Advertisements

The choice by Donald Trump of climate change denialist and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA is a typically deplorable choice for the president-elect. As Bernie Sanders put it,

“Scott Pruitt, is a climate denier who’s worked closely with the fossil fuel industry. That’s sad and dangerous.”

The Sierra Club took a more serious tone in their response: “Having Scott Pruitt in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency is like putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.”

Advertisements

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) agreed with Sanders, saying of Pruitt, “It’s a sickening and a saddening choice.”

.@SenWhitehouse on Trump's pick to lead EPA, Scott Pruitt: "It's a sickening and a saddening choice" #inners https://t.co/QHy0H5gyjO — All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) December 8, 2016

Just to give you an idea of how bad a choice this is, here is a photo Pruitt tweeted last year:

Bill McKibben gives the incoming EPA head a well-deserved ribbing via twitter:

“Having helped turn OK into the most seismically active part of the US, Scott ‘Frack’ Pruitt is ready to shake up DC! Exciting times!”

What O What is McKibben talking about? Why, just this:

How The Oil And Gas Industry Awakened Oklahoma's Sleeping Fault Lines https://t.co/YNLRx5f2c0 — JUDITH MILLSTEAD (@ARTSYJUDITH) December 8, 2016

As explained by FiveThirtyEight’s Maggie Koerth-Baker,

Before 2008, Oklahoma had maybe a couple of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater each year, said George Choy, a research geophysicist with the USGS who studies human-caused quakes. In 2015, it had around 900. The evidence studied by scientists like Choy and Hough strongly suggests that this increase was caused by the practice of injecting wastewater from oil and gas extraction — both conventional and fracking — back into the earth. To understand why that is, and why those same scientists can’t tell you whether any individual earthquake was caused by the petroleum industry, you have to pay attention to the faults.

So not only do we have a fossil fuel guy in charge of the EPA, which will effectively gut that agency, fulfilling a long-time Republican dream, but Pruitt’s appointment will put in charge a guy whose career has been based on making American more, not less addicted to the fossil fuels that are destroying our environment.

If you don’t think this is an awful choice already, consider dead-beat dad and Tea Partier Joe Walsh’s take:

“Trump picks OK Att Gen Scott Pruitt to head EPA. Huge critic of Obama’s EPA, he’s sued the agency lots. Great pick.”