Trump to pull nomination of top environment adviser

WEST PALM BEACH ( Florida): The White House confirmed plans to withdraw the nomination of a climate change sceptic with ties to the fossil fuel industry to serve as President Donald Trump’s top environmental adviser.

Kathleen Hartnett White was announced last October as Trump’s choice to chair the Council on Environmental Quality.

She had served under former Texas Gov Rick Perry, now Trump’s energy secretary, for six years on a commission overseeing the state environmental agency.

But White’s nomination languished in the Senate, and was among a batch of nominations the Senate sent back to the White House at the end of 2017 when Congress closed up for the year.

Trump resubmitted White’s nomination in January.

White, who is not a scientist, has compared the work of mainstream climate scientists to “the dogmatic claims of ideologues and clerics”.

In a contentious Senate hearing last November, she defended past statements that particulate pollution released by burning fuels is not harmful unless one were to suck on a car’s tailpipe.

Critics of White’s nomination to head the council pointed to her praise of fossil fuels as having improved living conditions around the world and helping to end slavery.

She has called carbon dioxide not a pollutant but “a necessary nutrient for plant life”.

During Perry’s tenure as governor of Texas, White often was critical of what she called the Obama administration’s “imperial EPA”, the Environmental Protection Agency, and she opposed stricter limits on air and water pollution.

White could not immediately be reached late Saturday for comment.