A Salt Lake Tribune political cartoon showed Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, changing a sign to read “Environmental Polluters Agency.”
From an environmental stand point, President Trump made the worst possible choice for a person to administer the EPA. Pruitt rejects the scientific consensus that human activities are a primary contributor to climate change, and he urged Trump to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. After Pruitt became head of the EPA, information on climate change was removed from the EPA website. He wants to cut the EPA budget by 31 percent.
Pruitt has made over a hundred appointments to meet with representatives of the fossil fuel industry but only five appointments to meet with environmentalists.
Before becoming the EPA administrator, Pruitt was the attorney general for the state of Oklahoma. As attorney general, he sued the EPA 14 times and maintained that the EPA should be eliminated. In his political campaigns he has received over $300,000 in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry.
It’s too bad that Trump picked someone to head the EPA who is mainly interested in delaying or rolling back regulations intended to protect the environment.
Russell Patterson, West Valley City