It's unlikely the meeting with Harper caused Pruitt to target scientific oversight at his agency, but the former prime minister's record provides a model for executing on the men's shared policy goals of limiting environmental regulation and boosting fossil fuel production.

Two months after the meeting, Pruitt's EPA began dismissing members of the Board of Scientific Counselors, an internal review panel meant to advise the agency on science. Pruitt had close ties to the oil and gas industry in his role as Oklahoma's top cop, and previously sued the EPA more than a dozen times to block environmental regulations. Since taking office, he has steamrolled his own scientists and made scrapping rules to limit pollution and climate-altering emissions the cornerstone priority of his administration.

By June, the EPA had discharged dozens of scientists across its 23 committees, while nominating new leaders with ties to the fossil fuel and chemical industries ― companies the EPA is supposed to regulate. Late last month, the environmental chemist who leads the Board of Scientific Counselors publicly accused Pruitt's chief of staff of pressuring her to alter her congressional testimony and stick to political "talking points" she said she bucked with actual scientific determinations.

Harper carried out a similar ouster during his time as Canada's prime minister. The son of an Imperial Oil senior accountant, Harper sought to bolster Canada's oil industry. His government secretly spent $30 million on public relations advertising to burnish the image of Alberta's oilsands industry, responsible for some of the most heavily polluting oil production in the world.

Harper also slashed funding for climate and environmental research, eliminated the nation's chief science advisory role and barred the country's 23,000 federal scientists from speaking to the press without permission. In a blistering critique five years ago, The Economist characterized Harper as a bully "intolerant of criticism and dissent."

In 2012, Harper withdrew Canada from the United Nations-brokered Kyoto Protocol, a deal to cut planet-warming emissions. He called the accord "job-killing, economy-destroying" and "a socialist scheme." That same year, he shuttered the renowned Experimental Lakes Area research station, described by Foreign Policy as a "gem of Canadian environmental science that has helped spur global policy on acid rain." He also rewrote rules in the Fisheries Act to make it easier to build pipelines under protected streams and waterways.