In my last post, which I realize was over a year ago and I have had much on which to catch up and comment, I looked at the track record of newly nominated Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt in his home state of Oklahoma. I made the case that, similar to other cabinet picks by Donald Trump at the time, Pruitt was just another in a long series of people who, at best, had limited or no experience or expertise in the areas for which they were nominated to serve, and at worst, were hostile to the objectives of their respective agencies.
For any rational person who actually cared about having qualified and serious cabinet members help guide the ship in Washington, Pruitt would be at or near the bottom of the list for a post at the EPA. But true to form, given the proverbial gaggle of incompetent or unqualified people nominated to Trump’s cabinet and administration — those who have yet to be fired or resign, that is — he simply doesn’t care how well these people know their subjects or how vigorously they stand up for the principles of their offices.
My implication last year that Pruitt was going to be ill-fit for the job and even deleterious to its mission has come to bear. Over the last year, he micromanaged efforts to remove information about climate change work from the EPA’s website (more here), defended Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement signed by 195 nations, including Syria — a striking embarrassment for the United States in its own right — and last October, started a process to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the country’s only major initiative to curb carbon plant emissions.
To anyone who is paying attention, all of this should come as no surprise. As I said previously, Pruitt made his bones railing against the EPA, with more than a dozen lawsuits against the agency to boot, as attorney general in Oklahoma. And he has openly questioned humanity’s role in contributing to climate change, telling CNBC:
I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.
So no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet, we need to continue to debate, continue the review and analysis.
Of course, that’s in direct opposition to data from NASA and every credible scientific exploration of the topic on the planet. I would wager that, next to nuclear war, climate change and its potential for long-term, seismic impacts to the environment is the most pressing issue that we are facing as a species. In a 2014 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called the environmental trends we are currently seeing “unequivocal”:
Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.
and
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.
Most recently, a memo leaked from Pruitt’s office continued to throw shade on the idea that humans are causing climate change and all its disastrous effects. Here is point five:
Human activity impacts our changing climate in some manner. The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact, and what to do about it, are subject to continuing debate and dialogue.
“In some manner” would be a giant understatement. The memo also said “clear gaps” still existed in our understanding of human’s impact on the climate, even though there was no elaboration. Attempting to argue that there are gaps in our understanding of manmade climate change is a copout, of course, and only serves to delay any significant work in this area with the expressed intent to continue propping up the worst offenders in the carbon and gas industries because Pruitt and his ilk have a financial vested interest in halting or curbing regulations altogether.
Add to that Pruitt’s recent egregious travel expenses and supposedly required security detail in places like Disneyland and the Vatican — I don’t think taking tours to Italy and Disneyland is part of the EPA director’s job description — and you have the top environmental official in the nation clearly not caring about his own carbon footprint, his own excessive use of taxpayer dollars or conflicts of interest related to his job.
But for a president who thinks he can govern from Twitter and insult most everyone on the planet, except for Vladmir Putin, of course, these are the kinds of people we should have expected to lead the charge. And, predictably, they seem to be crashing and burning one by one, much like the administration itself.
Sources:
- https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/our-mission-and-what-we-do
- https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/epa-climate-adaptation_us_5abbb5e3e4b04a59a31387d7
- https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29012018/scott-pruitt-epa-climate-websites-erased-emails-reveal-close-involvement-clean-power-plan
- https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/epa-climate-change-talking-points/index.html
- https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/syria-is-joining-the-paris-agreement-now-what/545261/
- http://www.newsweek.com/scott-pruitt-personally-oversaw-efforts-erase-climate-change-information-epa-798069
- http://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-worlds-biggest-risk-charts-21050
- https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/22/oklahoma-attorney-generals-office-releases-7500-pages-of-emails-between-scott-pruitt-and-fossil-fuel-industry/?utm_term=.25689e186167
[Cover image credit: “.:Warming Global:.” by DeviantArt user spotterfire-cat.]