EPA Admin Scott Pruitt and ranking Dem Tom Carper had a private chat following the fireworks at Tuesday’s Senate hearing, according to a Politico Pro story. Carper reportedly told Pruitt that he would be blocking two of Pruitt’s nominees until Kathleen Hartnett White withdraws from consideration as head of the Council on Environmental Quality.
One of Pruitt’s now-stalled nominees is Holly Greaves as Chief Financial Officer, which is remarkable only in that she doesn’t seem to be directly connected with the fossil fuel industry, like so many other nominees. One of these industry shills happens to be Andrew Wheeler, the other now-blocked nominee who Pruitt wants a his Deputy Administrator. Given that Wheeler lobbied for coal, he and fossil-fuel-friendly Pruitt are two peas in a pod. (And since Wheeler also thought Trump is a bully, clearly he and Pruitt will get along.)
Hopefully, Pruitt’s desire to have a fellow fossil fuel lover at his right hand means he’ll push Trump to rescind Hartnett White’s nomination. Or, with the writing on the wall, hopefully Hartnett White will get the hint and resign.
As we’ve discussed before, Hartnett White could not be further from the ideal choice to advise the White House on the state of the environment. A fresh Daily Beast story published yesterday reiterates some of the many reasons why Carper and dozens of other Senators have been so opposed to her nomination.
In her first committee hearing-- an appearance Carper tells the Daily Beast was “excruciating”--she admitted to not knowing if water expands as it warms. Then there’s the fact that she copied and pasted a bunch of her written answers to committee questions from Scott Pruitt and Bill Wehrum’s answers.
Even before these missteps, she was always a bad choice for CEQ.
First there are all the examples of writing standard denier nonsense like writing that carbon dioxide can’t be pollution because “Our flesh, blood and bones are built of carbon,” and advanced nonsense, like that there is “a historical connection” between fossil fuels and ending slavery. The fact that the group she currently works for, the Texas Public Policy Foundation is funded by the Kochs and Exxon and Big Tobacco and so many others makes Hartnett White’s crazy denier-fuelled answers a little more explainable.
And with that, there’s no surprise that during her tenure as a commissioner of the Texas Council on Environmental Quality, the agency broke federal EPA rules to hide information about radioactive water from the public. Hartnett White was so brazenly pro-fossil fuels during her tenure at the TCEQ that the Dallas Morning News, a paper in the heart of the oil industry, called her a “apologist for polluters” and wrote her exit from the agency “welcome news.”
Her exit from the national CEQ nomination would also be welcome news. And with Carper’s pressure on Pruitt, she’s certainly in hot water. Just don’t ask her if that water’s expanding…
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