Scott Pruitt
The Car Industry’s Rollback Effort — Disappointing But Not Surprising
The struggle to force the car industry to cut pollution goes back six decades.
The car industry is appealing for President Trump’s help against stricter carbon standards for cars. The industry’s action is disappointing for those who believed industry claims to embrace sustainability and technological innovation. There’s no good excuse for the industry’s about-face on a regulation it had originally agreed to. As one of the architects of the …
Continue reading “The Car Industry’s Rollback Effort — Disappointing But Not Surprising”
CONTINUE READING“States’ Rights” and Environmental Law: California on the Front Lines
EPA’s Assault on Air Quality Protection Will Aim at California’s Standards, While Other States Have Given Up Their Authority to Protect Public Health and the Environment More Strictly
This article just published in the Atlantic explains well one of the many ways that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt may attempt to deeply harm our environment for decades to come: through declining to grant, or revoking, the waivers that allow California to regulate air pollution from new motor vehicle engines more strictly than the federal government does. …
Continue reading ““States’ Rights” and Environmental Law: California on the Front Lines”
CONTINUE READINGWill There Be Guerrilla War at EPA?
Scott Pruitt’s invasion of EPA probably won’t be met with flowers.
Scott Pruitt has spent his career at war with EPA, and he has now invaded the homeland. What he encounters may look more like a guerrilla war than a bureaucratic surrender. To be blunt, it’s generally a mistake to expect an invading force to be greeted with flowers and hugs from the grateful inhabitants. Agencies like …
Continue reading “Will There Be Guerrilla War at EPA?”
CONTINUE READINGMaking America Great Again for Dirty Energy
Connecting the Dots on Congressional Action, Trump Appointments
It is hard to imagine a better start to a Presidential Administration for the fossil fuel industry than this one. Three of Trump’s appointees to cabinet positions — Scott Pruitt as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy and Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State — are deeply intertwined with …
Continue reading “Making America Great Again for Dirty Energy”
CONTINUE READINGEarth Day, 2017 Should Be The Next Massive Rally
The 47th Earth Day falls this year on April 22, a Saturday. The fortuity of a weekend date makes Earth Day the perfect opportunity to marshall the energy of the wildly successful Women’s marches around the world to demand that Congress and the Trump Administration protect our planet (hat tip to Emmett Fellow Julia Forgie …
Continue reading “Earth Day, 2017 Should Be The Next Massive Rally”
CONTINUE READINGThe Perils of Inexperience
The Scott Pruitts of the Trump cabinet face some tricky challenges.
There’s even a name for it in sports: “rookie error.” That’s the kind of mistake that talented players make when they’ve been bumped up into the big time.The big issue for appointees like Pruitt is to avoid that kind of mistake — and in the meantime, to accomplish their agendas. By all accounts, Scott Pruitt …
Continue reading “The Perils of Inexperience”
CONTINUE READINGTrump Has Thrown Down the Gauntlet
Trump’s latest cabinet appointment confirms the pattern: he plans to govern from the far Right.
Given that Trump has shifted his positions so often, there’s always been at least a faint hope that he would rethink his vehement opposition to environmental protection. True, he had called climate change a Chinese hoax, but he later said he had an open mind about the Paris Agreement and then he had an apparently …
Continue reading “Trump Has Thrown Down the Gauntlet”
CONTINUE READINGAnd the EPA Pick Is…
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt
According to reports this morning, the EPA pick will be Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. We’ll hear more about him in the coming days. For me, the story that sticks out most about him is this one – revealing his history of copying and pasting letters written by fossil fuel lobbyists and sending them under …
Continue reading “And the EPA Pick Is…”
CONTINUE READINGJoin Our Mailing List
Climate policy is changing rapidly. Stay in the loop with expert analysis via email Monday - Friday.
