President Trump has nominated Kathleen Hartnett White, a current senior policy adviser at the free-market think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, to serve as the White House’s senior environmental policy adviser. Hartnett has argued that calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is “absurd,” and that C02 should instead be considered the gas of life.
“Mrs. White also has called renewable energy ‘unreliable and parasitic,’ described global warming as ‘a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science,’ and asserted that science does not dictate policy in democracies,” says the New York Times.
Conservatives are hopeful that White will help roll back Obama-era climate regulations, along with the expanded regulatory oversight on water pollution established under the Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS).
“The appointment is the latest in a series of disputed environmental nominations,” says the Times. “This week, Mr. Trump nominated Barry Lee Myers, the chief executive of AccuWeather, a for-profit weather forecasting company, to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last week, the president nominated Andrew Wheeler, a coal lobbyist, to be deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.”