Trump’s EPA will be a disaster for our children

As a mother of two young children, I felt sick when I saw Donald Trump had chosen Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (“Trump’s disastrous pick for EPA,” Dec. 8).

We need an EPA administrator who takes threats to clean water and air seriously — especially for the most vulnerable citizens. In Oklahoma, Mr. Pruitt sued the EPA over its plan to reduce haze caused by coal-fired power plants, calling it an issue of “aesthetics.”

As your editorial noted, his actions have often been so closely aligned with the fossil fuel industry that their lobbyists have drafted letters signed by Mr. Pruitt on Oklahoma state letterhead and sent to the White House.

His refusal to acknowledge the scientific consensus about climate change is especially troubling. With other large polluters, the U.S. caused soon-to-be irreversible changes. If emissions continue unchecked, a great deal of our world’s glaciers will melt and a rising sea together with tides and storm surges will cause massive flooding in coastal cities such as Baltimore.

Warming is upon us. Last year, we picked out Christmas trees in short sleeves, then experienced our first 70-degree Christmas Eve. The same year, South Carolina was devastated by the heaviest rainfall in over 100 years. California is in an unprecedented drought exacerbated by climate change. Snowpack in the beautiful Rockies is shrinking.

My boys are 2 years old and 8 months, rosy-cheeked with new life. If we don’t act now, it will be too late to rescue them from a future I can hardly bear to imagine.

We don’t have to guess what a dismantled EPA — what Mr. Trump promised in his campaign speeches — would mean. Look at places that haven’t spent decades building protections for clean water and air. In recent months, New Delhi has been cloaked in pollution and breathing outside is like smoking two packs of cigarettes.

Is this the future Mr. Trump envisions for his grandchildren?