EPA nominee weathers intense questioning
Wheeler, a Butler County native, jousts with Dems.
Senate Democrats WASHINGTON — sharply questioned U.S. Environment Protection Agency nominee Andrew Wheeler for suggesting Wednesday that a failure to thin out heavy forests is a greater cause of wildfires than climate change.
During a confirmation hearing before the Senate Environmental Committee into Wheeler’s nomination as EPA administrator, the Butler County native said wildfires which last year burned millions of acres of forests and killed more than 80 people in the West Coast had “some relation to climate change, but the biggest issue, in my opinion, is forest management.”
Wheeler testified that he takes “very seriously” efforts to protect the nation’s environment and health of Americans, but his comments on climate change alarmed committee Democrats.
“I would not call it the greatest crisis, no sir,” Wheeler said. “I consider it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally,” adding that he believes human beings contribute to global warming.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, acknowledged that thicker forests have contributed to the fires, but called Wheeler’s answer “disheartening,” adding that forest management “is not the reason these fires are so” widespread. “It’s because the summer season is so much hotter and longer.”
Republicans on the GOP-majority Senate Environment and Public Works Committee mostly had praise for Wheeler. The committee chairman, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., called Wheeler “very well qualified” to take the job.
The issue of climate change sharply divides the two major political parties, with Democrats insisting it is one of the paramount issues of our time while conservative Republicans dismissing fears of global warning as exaggerated.
Ironically in his prepared remarks, Wheeler acknowledged the country’s dramatic improvement in air quality through federal regulation since 1970 when lawmakers from both parties supported creation of the EPA and the Clean Air Act.
He noted that from 1970 to 2017, the six major air pollutants — which include carbon monoxide, lead, ozone, and sulfur dioxide — fell by “73 percent while the economy grew over 260 percent.”
Wheeler, tapped by Trump to replace Scott Pruitt as EPA administrator after Pruitt resigned last year under an ethical cloud, said he considers himself “a conservationist” and vowed to “follow the law and Supreme Court cases.”
Wheeler, who answered questions in a calm, matterof-fact style, did not seem to inspire the intensity of anger that Democrats had against Pruitt.
“Mr. Wheeler is certainly not the ethically bereft embarrassment that Scott Pruitt proved to be and — to be fair — he has engaged more frequently and substantively than Scott Pruitt with both Congress and EPA career staff,” said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, the committee’s ranking Democrat.
But Carper, a 1968 graduate of Ohio State University, said Wheeler’s “environmental policies appear to be just as extreme as his predecessor’s.”
In a conference call with Ohio reporters, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a critic of Wheeler, said he was “not ready to say” he would vote against Wheeler on the floor “until I study it a little bit more.”
( Jessica Wehrman of the Washington Bureau and the Associated Press contributed to this story.)