Choice Words From Scott Pruitt

The new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, addressed the agency’s employees for the first time on Tuesday morning, and a widely reported viewpoint is that he at least tried to be conciliatory. No talk about downsizing or eliminating the agency in this speech. No mention in his remarks of canceling the Clean Power Plan or rolling back water pollution protections. There will be plenty of time for that, after all, once the rumored executive orders come from the White House. Instead, Pruitt talked about baseball, the founding fathers, and the importance of civility. Pretty uncontroversial stuff. Then, right at the end, in the Rachel Carson Room, he quoted the founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir: “Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in.” Here’s how Pruitt interpreted Muir’s words: “We as an agency and nation can be pro energy and jobs and environment. We don’t have to choose.” That’s actually not the choice that will confront the leader of the Environmental Protection Agency. When oil and gas companies want to drill in our national parks, we have to choose whether to let them. When the methane emissions from natural gas operations are polluting our atmosphere, we have to choose whether to regulate them. When coal companies want to dump toxic waste in the streams of Appalachia, we have to choose whether to look the other way. Those aren’t theoretical exa...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news