EPA chief Scott Pruitt, who gives little credence to man-made climate change, is packing his agency with other climate skeptics, says The New York Times.
“Mr. Pruitt has drawn heavily from the staff of his friend and fellow Oklahoma Republican, Senator James Inhofe, long known as Congress’s most prominent skeptic of climate science,” says the Times. “A former Inhofe chief of staff, Ryan Jackson, will be Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff. Another former Inhofe staff member, Byron Brown, will serve as Mr. Jackson’s deputy. Andrew Wheeler, a fossil fuel lobbyist and a former Inhofe chief of staff, is a finalist to be Mr. Pruitt’s deputy, although he requires confirmation to the position by the Senate.”
Don Benton, a former state senator from Washington and a Trump campaigner, will serve as the EPA’s senior liaison to the White House, while Douglas Ericksen, a current Washington State senator, is being interviewed for the agency’s regional administrator for the Pacific Northwest.
“As a state senator, Mr. Ericksen has been active in opposing efforts to pass a state-level climate change law taxing carbon pollution. Last month, he invited Tony Heller, a climate denialist who blogs under the pseudonym Steven Goddard, to address a Washington State Senate committee on the costs of climate change policy. Mr. Heller’s blog says ‘global warming is the biggest fraud in science history,’” reports the Times.
Pruitt is also considering David Kreutzer, a senior research fellow in energy economics and climate change at the conservative Heritage Foundation, for a “permanent position,” says the Times. Kreutzer has publicly said that more carbon in the atmosphere is actually beneficial.