Last Call For The Late Great Planet Earth, Again

Just in case there were still goofy-ass voters out there who voted for Trump because "He couldn't possibly be as cartoonishly evil as people make him out to be," please meet the incoming head of America's Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma GOP Attorney General Scott Pruitt.

Pruitt’s selection, while not a surprise, signifies a complete rethinking of the EPA. 

Environmental groups were appalled by the selection, saying it was a win for polluters and a loss for the American public. 

As with so many of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet and transition staff, Pruitt does not accept the scientific consensus on climate change. As attorney general, Pruitt has routinely backed fossil fuel interests over those of environmental regulators and has rejected the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide, the leading contributor to human-caused climate change. 

Pruitt’s ties to fossil fuel companies run deep. He received some $300,000 in fossil fuel money to support his campaign for attorney general. 

In one instance, Pruitt used talking points from an energy company in a letter to the EPA, opposing air pollution standards for natural gas production. According to reporting from the New York Times, Devon Energy, an Oklahoma-based oil and gas company actually wrote the 2011 letter, which Pruitt submitted on state letterhead.

In other words, the worst possible person for the job, somebody professionally dedicated to destroying the EPA.

“Every American should be appalled that President-elect Trump just picked someone who has made a career of being a vocal defender for polluters to head our Environmental Protection Agency,” Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen said in an emailed statement. “He has fought Environmental Protection Agency pollution limits on toxic substances like soot and mercury that put us all at risk for increased cancer, childhood asthma and other health problems. He falsely claims that fracking doesn’t contaminate drinking water supplies.”

You know, Oklahoma, where the earthquakes come sweeping down the plain due to massive fracking that has so destabilized the geography there, that the state is now the new quake capital of the US and that it will take a decade to get things back to normal at the minimum.

But now the agency in charge of regulating fracking is under control of the state's point man on suing the EPA out of existence.  Energy companies have to be drooling in anticipation, and that's just the fracking part.  Wait until the EPA reverses or eliminates regulations on clean air and water too.

I sure hope you don't breathe or drink in 2017.