As head of the EPA, Scott Pruitt is working up plans to rewrite climate change rules, reduce staffing and close regional offices. But it’s likely he will use a “scalpel rather than a meat cleaver” to cut the agency’s authority, says The New York Times.
“Here’s my impression about Pruitt: I don’t think he’s going in there to blow up the agency,” Jeffrey Holmstead, a senior EPA official during the George W. Bush administration who has been rumored as a possible deputy to Pruitt, told the Times. “I think he’ll be very careful to make sure they’ve done everything legally to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.”
For example, if President Trump repeals Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which calls for cutting carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 30 percent before 2030, Pruitt will help write a new climate change plan. He’ll continue to monitor carbon dioxide levels, which the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to do. But if Pruitt’s national climate change plan looks anything like the one he developed for Oklahoma while serving as attorney general, it would treat fossil fuel companies lightly, asking them only to install technology to clean up their operations, rather than encouraging a market shift to solar and wind power.
Likewise, staffing cuts won’t be as large as those recommended by climate change-denier Myron Ebell, head of Trump’s transition team at EPA, when he said the agency should go from 15,000 people to 5,000. But Pruitt will likely let employees go in regional offices — an attempt at getting the EPA to leave states alone — while maintaining enough staff, especially lawyers, in Washington, D.C., to help Pruitt draft his own pro-industry regulations.