Scott Pruitt is Trump’s Pick to Head the EPA:
A Regime Dead Set on Destroying Life on Earth

December 7, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Scott Pruitt is Donald Trump’s nominee for head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As Attorney General of Oklahoma, Pruitt has been a rabid attack dog for the fossil fuel industry. He fought even the very limited steps the Obama administration took to try to contain global climate change. He has fought clean air and water rules that have been in effect for decades. Pruitt, and the Trump regime, represent an extreme escalation of the danger humanity faces. 

Scott Pruitt is a climate change denier. He would head the EPA for a president who belligerently, and with no scientific backing at all, declares climate change a hoax. Pruitt is obsessed with shredding obstacles to fracking. In Oklahoma, that has led to serious environmental disaster already. In a state where significant earthquakes were uncommon, fracking has led to a situation where one Native American Indian reservation suffered 816 earthquakes in one year. He was point man in fighting to extend the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline. He is a cheerleader for coal mining. His record as attorney general in Oklahoma was one of literally transcribing lying propaganda from oil industry lobbyists and submitting it on official government letterhead to federal agencies (See “Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the EPA, is a literal stenographer for the oil and gas industry,” New York Daily News December 7, 2016).

Pruitt will join the Christian-fascist faction of the Trump regime. As Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt fought for the “right” of public school administrators to distribute Bibles to students in classrooms.

There are other Christian fascist, climate-denying, officials who function as full-time mouthpieces for the energy industry. It would have been an obscene insult to appoint any of them to head the EPA. But Pruitt combines an obsession with energy production at whatever cost to the environment, with proven expertise in challenging even long-established environmental regulations. Pruitt has articulated and cohered a “movement” of fascist state officials to challenge the legality of any and all environmental protection under the principle of “states' rights.” An exploration of what is behind, and what is represented by fascists like Pruitt invoking “states' rights” is beyond the scope of this article, but readers are strongly encouraged to dig into the excerpt, “The Peculiar History of the United States: Slavery, ‘States’ Rights’ and the Federal Government,” from the work Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon, by Bob Avakian.

A regime that nominates someone like Scott Pruitt to head an agency supposedly dedicated to “environmental protection” is utterly illegitimate. This regime must be STOPPED, NOW.

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