BY TIMOTHY CAMA
President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Scott Pruitt, the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma and a frequent legal adversary to President Obama, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a transition official told The Hill.
If confirmed by the Senate to oversee the 15,000-employee agency, Pruitt would take the lead on dismantling the EPA regulations that Trump targeted throughout his campaign as job killers that restrict economic growth.
Pruitt has been a legal opponent of President Obama over nearly every major regulation and executive action, not only on environmental issues but also ObamaCare, immigration and bathroom use by transgender people.
Pruitt has led litigation against Obama’s landmark climate rule for power plants, as well as water regulations and standards for ground-level ozone pollution, haze, methane and more.
As EPA head, Pruitt would help carry out Trump’s campaign promises to repeal Obama’s entire executive climate change agenda, including the Clean Power Plan, which the president-elect said he will target in his first 100 days in office.
Having someone like Pruitt who always puts industry prerogatives ahead environmental protection at a time when the planet is teetering on a tipping point for disastrous global warming Pruitt’s appointment would be an environmental disaster of unpresidented magnitude since the Great Extinction was triggered by an asteroid striking the earth and blotting out the sun’s rays. Pruitt would be an extremely serious blunder for all Americans.