Trumps EPA pick recently called climate change a religious belief
Scott Pruitt toned it down for his confirmation hearing, but comments in the last year reveal extreme views on climate and the EPA.
Natasha Geiling
Feb 13
Sitting before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee last month, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency — tried to strike a measured tone on some of the most pressing environmental issues facing the country, from climate change to carbon dioxide regulations.
Pruitt said he would not seek to overturn a 2009 finding allowing the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, for instance, and acknowledged the reality of climate change — though he wrongly argued that the role of human activity is subject to debate.
But in interviews given to the Oklahoma-based, energy industry-focused radio show Exploring Energy over the past year, Pruitt has taken a far less moderate stance on the issues he would oversee as EPA administrator, from the Obama administration’s signature climate regulation, the Clean Power Plan, to the issue of climate change.
“I appeared before the U.S. Senate Committee, last year I believe it was, sometime earlier in the year, about the Clean Power Plan challenge that we were part of leading,” Pruitt said during an April 2016 appearance on the show. “And this Senator from Rhode Island during the midst of the testimony was just — it is just a religious belief for him and for others.”
https://thinkprogress.org/scott-pruitt-epa-radio-show-comments-c88820974ce7#.lq4by942q