The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
Trump picks foe of Obama’s climate agenda to run environment agency
Scott Pruitt is a known ally of fossil fuel industry
US PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump has selected Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma Attorney General and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), signalling Trump’s determination to dismantle President Barack Obama’s efforts to counter climate change — and much of the EPA itself.
Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle against Obama’s climate change policies, actions that fit with the Presidentelect’s comments during the campaign. Trump has criticised the established science of human-caused global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the Paris accord committing nearly every nation to taking action to fight climate change, and attacked Obama’s signature global warming policy, the Clean Power Plan, as a “war on coal.”
“Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” Pruitt wrote in National Review earlier this year. “That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”
A meeting Monday between the President-elect and former Vice President Al Gore may have given environmental activists a glimmer of hope that Trump was moderating his campaign stance. With the choice of Pruitt, that hope will have faded.
“During the campaign, Mr Trump regularly threatened to dismantle the EPA and roll back many of the gains made to reduce Americans’ exposures to industrial pollution, and with Pruitt, the president-elect would make good on those threats,” said Ken Cook, head of the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organisation.
Pruitt, 48, is a hero to conservative activists, one of a group of Republican attorneys general who formed an alliance with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda.
Puzder is Labour Secy
Trump is expected to add another wealthy business person and elite donor to his Cabinet, with fastfood executive Andrew Puzder as Labour Secretary. Puzder heads CKE Restaurants Holdings, the parent company of Carl’s Jr, Hardee’s and other chains. In 2010, he published a book called Job Creation: How it Really Works and Why Government Doesn't Understand It.
A Republican official and a person close to Trump's transition said Thursday Trump had settled on Puzder for the job, but it had not been announced. The Californian was one of Trump’s earliest campaign financiers, serving as a co-chairman of his California finance team and organising fundraisers.