There is only ONE WAY to interpret ANYTHING the Scott Pruitt TOOL of the fossil fuel industry says:
HE IS DEFENDING the Fossil Fuel Industry Profit Over People and Planet Plunderers!
Reagan started what Trump, with Pruitt AND Rex Tillerson, wants to finish:
Reagan almost destroyed the EPA in the 1980’s.
THAT is why the EPA has been limited to wrist slapping polluters (who laugh all the way to the bank) in regard to pollution from fracking, the flaring of toxic gases on land or in the ocean willy nilly, this or that fossil fuel industry corroded pipeline, oil spills, abandoned wells leaking methane, HOW the leaked methane is measured, radionuclide damage from Fukushima health effects from pollution ETC., ad nauseam (see winken, blinken and nod).
What really Happened at the EPA
In July of 1983, we were fully two years into the Reagan era, and had yet to begin the orgy of privatization and demonization of government that has become the norm 30 years hence.
One of the articles featured a look at what really happened at the EPA. It recounts how fully 2 years into the Reagan Administration, the foxes were hired to guard the chicken coop. A supporter of the so-called ”Sagebrush Rebellion,” in which ranchers were pitted against the federal Bureau of Land Management, who wished to restrict or limit their God-given right to use public lands to graze their cattle. Reagan would place industry types in charge of the agencies charged with regulating the environment.
Vile names from the past pop up as villains in the set piece: Joseph Coors, a rabid anti-environmentalist, supported the goals of the Sagebrush rebellion and brought many of his followers and acolytes along for the ride. James Watt was named interior secretary. Robert Burford, a leader of the Sagebrush rebellion, was appointed director of the Bureau of land management, the agency that the rebellion was engaged with in many pitched battles. The notorious Anne Gorsuch, whose legacy of abuse was such that she became the first agency head to be cited for contempt of Congress, was made head of EPA. These Reaganauts eviscerated the regulatory oversight that their respective agencies were to have provided, with predictable results. As we look back over the span of 30 years, and wonder how did we become so cynical, if it is easy to trace how the popular vision of government as a champion for the aims and desires of ordinary people was transformed into that of an oppressor of those aims, and a waste of money besides.
What is remarkable about this article is, from a remove of 30 years, how naïve it seems. The author traces how budgets were cut, how regulations were upended, and the very mission of regulatory agencies themselves tainted. In Reagan’s wanton destruction, we see the beginnings of the “oppressive government regulations” meme so prevalent today.
www.doomsteaddiner.net/…
In 2005, with Cheney, things got EVEN worse.
The EPA already had a track record, going back to Reagan, when he named an ENEMY of environmental protection to head that agency, of looking the other way on behalf of big money polluters like mining, fracking and fossil fuels.
The EPA was already corrupted by pro-dirty energy foxes in the environmental protection hen house. Don't tell me you didn't watch Gasland. It was all laid out BY a former EPA scientist.
But even that wasn't enough for the dirty energy bastards; they had to castrate the little oversight power that the EPA had:
For this we can thank the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the law that holds the Halliburton Loophole. Named after Dick Cheney and the notorious corporation he led before becoming vice president, the law (championed by Cheney and disgraced Enron founder Kenneth Lay, among others) explicitly exempted fracking operations from key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. These exemptions from one of America’s most fundamental environmental protection laws provided the oil and gas industry the immunity it required to develop a highly polluting process on a grand national scale.
One of the most troubling repercussions is how fracking companies hide the contents of their toxic water and chemical solutions pumped into the ground. Contamination of underground drinking water sources from fracking fluids is a glaring threat to public health and safety. Yet even doctors responding to fracking-related health complaints can’t access data on what particular chemicals their patients may have been exposed to.
But the Halliburton Loophole wasn’t the only fracking enabler in the Energy Policy Act. The act granted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) sweeping new authority to supersede state and local decision-making with regard to the citing of fracked gas pipelines and infrastructure. It also shifted to FERC industry oversight and compliance responsibility for the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, another key law. This was akin to putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
As it stands, FERC is entirely unaccountable to public will. It is unaccountable to Congress and even the White House. Commissioners are appointed to five-year terms and can do as they please. Until a law reigning in FERC is passed, the commission will continue to act as a rubber-stamp for the fossil fuel industry.
Additionally, the Energy Policy Act repealed an important anti-monopoly law, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA). PUHCA safeguarded consumers from the overreach of the oil and gas industry and banks that did business with those companies. It prevented the formation of giant state and regional energy cartels that could manipulate energy costs, engage in profiteering and exert undue influence over political debate. The Energy Policy Act transferred most of this oversight to FERC. Since then, the largest American energy companies have grown significantly more powerful and spent almost a billion dollars on federal lobbying, according to OpenSecrets.org.
The Fossil Fuel Industry has given us Degraded Democracy and Profit over Planet Pollution http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/fossil-fuel-folly/fossil-fuels-degraded-democracy-and-profit-over-planet-pollution/msg3594/#msg3594
EPA CASTRATION, as well as malfeasance, is PAR FOR THE fossil fuel fascist COURSE! It's been like that since Reagan. It was given STEROIDS with Cheney.
Trump, the Republican dominated Senate and TWO TRAITOR DEMOCRATS put Pruitt there to finish the job of destroying the EPA, (with a LOT OF HELP from Tillerson).
Pruitt is going to keep trying to sell the ridiculous bold faced lie that the fossil fuel industry in general, and the frackers in particular, can “self regulate” (see the Pruitt e-mails just released below). That is the canard they have used to continue using our air, land and water as a pollution dumping ground so they can be “more profitable”.
Emails Reveal EPA Chief Scott Pruitt’s Dirty Dealings With Oil and Gas Industry
Agelbert NOTE: As you will learn in the article, even those e-mails that have been released ARE NOT the whole story because they have been redacted along with a bunch of others that have NOT been released because the holy A.G. Office of Oklahoma considers them "privileged". These fossil fuel TOOLS never stop prevaricating and double talking to cover their crimes and corruption. Prison is too good for those destroyers of our biosphere.
SNIPPET:
Methane Regulation
On May 2, 2013, Scott Pruitt and 12 other attorneys general sent a letter to the EPA urging the agency to avoid regulating methane emissions. The emails released Tuesday make clear that Devon Energy had a hand in drafting the letter, which argued that voluntary industry efforts to restrict emissions were sufficient, that federal emissions estimates were inaccurate, and that regulating methane fell outside the purview of the law. The letter was meant to counter threats by northeastern states that they would file a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to regulate methane. "In sum," the letter reads, "regulation of methane emissions from oil and gas facilities is not ‘appropriate’ under the analysis contemplated by [the Clean Air Act]."
https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/emails-reveal-epa-chief-scott-pruitts-dirty-dealings-with-oil-and-gas-industry/
Voluntary industry efforts to restrict emissions (I.E. “Self Regulation”), is what gave us the Gulf of Mexico massive polluting accident in 2011. The MASSIVE amount of flaring that goes on has NEVER been addressed by the fossil industry because it’s, uh, “not profitable" to capture all those toxic gases (plus a lot methane that gets burned along with them). What they really mean is that they would have to treat the toxic gases as hazardous waste, so they would rather all those people and other life forms near the flaring EAT those gases. And believe me, they KNOW how toxic proximity to a flaring torch is. On the ocean going rigs they developed a “water curtain” to keep the rig crew members form breathing the gases BECAUSE they were getting respiratory diseases and cancer. But no, you haven’t read that, have you. and no, the EPA has done NOTHING about flaring pollution. The fossil Fuel Industry has NEVER regulated itself beyond doing whatever they had to do to get the product out of the well as cheaply as possible. Safety is a numbers game with them. They don’t want to kill off experienced rig operators too quickly, so they do take some precautions. But if you live near a refinery or a fracking site, that’s tough luck for you.
The only thing the Fossil Fuel Industry wants to “regulate” is the government’s ability to fine or imprison them for pollution harm to life forms in the biosphere who happen to be in the way of profit over planet, PERIOD.
EVERY POLITICIAN, be they a Democrat or Republican, that takes a nickel from the fossil fuel industry should be THROWN OUT IN 2018, OR SOONER.
As the title image portrays, the Fossil Fuelers are HOOKED on a suicidal business model BECAUSE they have always succeeded in corrupting government(s) to make we-the-people carry the pollution life killing costs.
They claim to be our “loyal servants", just "doing what we demand from them". That's a LIE! If there was any truth to it, we would ALL have the same power over the government that the fossil fuel industry does. They are literally profiting from degrading the biosphere at everyone's expense.
They KNOW IT. But like an addict, they will not let go of their profit over planet criminal assault on the biosphere in general (and the public welfare in particular), until we MAKE THEM.
Their plan is to get off scot-free (that may be one of Scott Pruitt’s private jokes!) with a slap on the wrist (see the Supreme Fascist Court decision on the Exxon Valdez pollution — award reduced to a TENTH!) when all the climate “bills” come due. DON’T let them get away with this.
The Social Cost of Carbon and the REPAIR of our biosphere from a century of pollution MUST BE PAID proportionately by those who MOST benefited from the burning of fossil fuels (I.e. the fossil fuel industry). They want to PASS THAT BUCK to we-the-people. THAT BUCK is coming due (see below):
During the last month, NASA released data confirming that globally, 2016 was the hottest year on record -- the third consecutive year this record has been broken. Even more disturbing, in the last three years alone global temperatures rose 0.4°C: an extreme acceleration of planetary warming that has been unmatched in 136 years of record keeping.
According to the reinsurance giant Munich Re, the US had more floods in 2016 than any year in recorded history with 19 different floods swamping the nation.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39540-viewing-trump-s-extreme-climate-denial-from-a-small-island-nation-in-peril
"Amid the din of grinding gears, midnight tweets, intrigue and White House infighting comes the sound of old wheels rolling backward, of laws and protections being rescinded and redacted, of a rapid retreat away from any pretense of concern for the environment, the elderly and the vulnerable, and toward even taller profits for a select few. They’re coming for our friends, family and neighbors, and they’re coming for the loot too. They want your money, and will have it if they can get it." -- Truthout, William Rivers Pitt, Columnist and Editor
Have a nice day.