While Oklahomans who supported Scott Pruitt’s nomination to be EPA Administrator think he will be an outstanding leader of the EPA, environmentalists have just the opposite view. And his Friday confirmation in the U.S. Senate left them bitterly disappointed.
“Despite calls to delay vote until court-ordered emails are released, Oklahoma AG and fossil fuel industry ally becomes head of Environmental Protection Agency,” wrote Inside Climate News.
The online news group also said Pruitt will find a friend in transition team member David Schnare “who worked for years at the agency while simultaneously working to undermine its regulatory mission.”
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club was equally derisive of Pruitt’s leadership.
“The EPA has a new chief, and Big Oil couldn’t be happier,” wrote Brune in a fund-raising email response. “I am SO furious: the senate just put an arsonist in charge of fighting fires.”
He went on to describe Pruitt as someone who denies climate change is real, who has taken talking points written by energy lobbyists to publicly attack Obama’s Clean Power Plan and “who is planning to dismantle the agency he now leads.”
