U.S. Democrats assail Trump environmental nominees over climate science – “You have a fringe voice that denies science, economics, and reality”
By Lisa Friedman
8 November 2017WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – A Senate hearing on nominees for two top environmental posts on Wednesday quickly turned testy over the Trump administration’s ambivalence on climate change science.
Andrew R. Wheeler, a lobbyist for Murray Energy, which is owned by Robert E. Murray, an Appalachian coal mining magnate and prominent backer of President Trump, has been nominated to be the deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Kathleen Hartnett White, a former Texas environmental regulator who has described belief in global warming as “a kind of paganism,” has been tapped to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Democratic members of the Environment and Public Works Committee focused much of their hostility on Mrs. White, a fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former chairwoman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Democrats assailed her past writings on climate change, including articles in which she called carbon dioxide “the gas of life” and described renewable energy as parasitic.“Your positions are so far out of the mainstream, they are not just outliers, they are outrageous,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. “You have a fringe voice that denies science, economics, and reality.”
Asked if she stood by her previous statements, Mrs. White replied, “It’s likely that CO2 has some influence on the climate,” but added that carbon dioxide did not have the characteristics of a pollutant that directly affects human health. “It’s a plant nutrient,” she said.
The Trump administration last week issued a comprehensive report on climate science that said that the planet was definitely growing warmer and that human activities were the predominant cause. Despite those unambiguous findings, administration officials and nominees continue to question the validity of climate change science.Mr. Wheeler, a former aide to Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, faced lighter questioning. He declined to pledge to recuse himself from working on lawsuits that Murray Energy has filed against the E.P.A., saying he would abide by the guidance of the agency’s ethics advisers. [more]
