Donald Trump has tapped Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general, to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and environmentalists are furious. The New York Times editorial board called his nomination “an aggressively bad choice” and “a poke in the eye to a long history of bipartisan cooperation on environmental issues.” Michael Brune, the head of the Sierra Club (and, admittedly, not the brightest green out there) described Pruitt as “a sworn enemy of the very agency he would be in charge of” and “a climate science denier and fossil fuel apologist.” Let’s take a look at each of those charges in turn.
Pruitt makes no attempt to hide his distaste for the EPA. In a 2015 interview with the FT, he criticized Obama’s marquee domestic climate initiative, the Clean Power Plan (CPP), as an initiative characterized by “almost an attitude that the states are a mere vessel of federal will.” The Clean Power Plan, which would be enforced by the EPA, mandates that states reduce CO2 emissions under the purview of the Clean Air Act, but Pruitt helped organize a group of state attorneys general to challenge the CPP in federal court. “[The Clean Power Plan] is wholly, wholly inconsistent with [the EPA’s] authority under the Clean Air Act,” Pruitt told the FT, adding that “[i]t’s a paternalism that’s exercised by DC to say: ‘We know best, you cannot take care of yourselves.’”
He also does little to hide his skepticism for climate science. In that same interview with the FT last year, Pruitt claimed that the topic of anthropogenic climate change was “subject to considerable debate.” He echoed that sentiment this year in a piece for the National Review, in which he asserted that the global warming debate “is far from settled.” He continued:
Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.
While he’s absolutely correct in pointing out that dissent isn’t criminal, and that debate can be healthy, on the topic of human-caused climate change, he’s dead wrong. Let’s be absolutely clear here: we know that our climate is changing, that surface temperatures are warming, and that they’re doing so largely because of a greater concentration of certain types of gases that trap more solar radiation in our atmosphere (the so-called greenhouse gases). We also know that, since the industrial revolution, humanity has been emitting these GHGs at an unprecedented pace.
But once we start looking closer at the details of our climate change, things quickly become a lot less certain. Given the enormous complexity of the system under study, that’s to be expected, and greens do themselves no favors by exaggerating just how firm our grasp on climate science really is. In this arena, dissenters should absolutely be free to raise concerns with the climate consensus, and it’s worrying that both environmentalists and the media have in recent years worked in tandem to squash those voices. That said, it’s clear that our planet is warming and that humans are culpable—that part of the science is settled—and it’s concerning to say the least that the proposed head of the EPA doesn’t see it that way.
How about the allegations that Pruitt is a fossil fuel apologist? There, too, the Sierra Club may have a point. In 2014, the NYT reported that a three-page letter the attorney general delivered to the EPA decrying federal air pollution regulations was written by the Oklahoma-based oil and gas company Devon Energy. E&E News reports that energy firms have contributed “$250,000 out of the $3.1 million he’s raised since 2002,” and his 2014 re-election campaign was headed up by the CEO of the shale producer Continental Resources (and top Trump energy advisor) Harold Hamm. He is not, in other words, unfamiliar with the oil and gas industry.
But the central thesis of Pruitt’s involvement in environmental regulation seems to boil down to a desire to place more of that power in the hands of states, and that, by itself, does not spell a disaster for the environment. From that aforementioned 2015 FT interview:
Mr Pruitt bristled at the suggestion that if left to its own devices, Oklahoma might do nothing to cut carbon emissions, noting that the state already generated about 15 per cent of its electricity from wind, making it the US’s fourth-biggest wind power state. “We drink the water, we breathe the air here in Oklahoma. To think that we don’t care about that, and somehow are being led to sacrifice those things is . . . not accurate,” he said.
And Oklahoma itself has just this year proven itself capable of stepping in to protect the environment and public health from industry. The state has seen a dramatic jump in small-magnitude earthquakes, and scientists have established a link between this increased seismicity and the storage of wastewater from oil and gas drilling (much of which has been generated by hydraulic fracturing) in old wells. Oklahoma’s Corporation Commission stepped in this March to address the issue, and told drillers to reduce their storage of wastewater in wells by 40 percent. In just a few short months the state saw evidence that earthquakes were quieting down, and Oklahoma is looking at a 43 percent reduction in seismicity this year as compared to 2015. Pruitt wasn’t involved in this crackdown, but it does serve as evidence that states can self-regulate.
Pruitt also proved himself knowledgable of one of the biggest shifts in the American energy landscape—shale gas’s displacement of coal—when he testified before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology’s Environment Subcommittee back in May. There, he pointed out that coal’s recent decline “didn’t happen as a result of the heavy hand of the EPA,” explaining that “as natural gas becomes increasingly affordable, it becomes an increasingly attractive alternative to coal.” This was part of his argument that states should retain “regulatory primacy,” and it hits the nail square on the head—while also contradicting Trump’s promise to bring coal back.
Trump’s nominee to head the EPA has raised the hackles of greens the world over, many of whom have legitimate concerns about what Pruitt might accomplish over the next four years. But if he is confirmed, Pruitt’s first goal won’t be to increase pollution or encourage greenhouse gas emissions, because despite the fears of many environmental groups, that kind of villain doesn’t exist in the real world. Rather, he’ll work to make the agency he’ll head less powerful by giving states a greater share of the environmental regulatory burden. Obama’s domestic green legacy will take a hit, but America’s rivers and skies won’t be suddenly inundated by pollutants—no state wants deadly smog or toxic water—and our emissions won’t immediately rise.
To that last point, there’s reason for optimism (despondent greens should pay close attention): a new report from Brookings finds that economic growth and carbon emissions are decoupling, and that this is “occurring in most U.S. states, confirming that cleaning up the economy doesn’t necessarily put an end to growth.” The American economy continues to become less energy intensive, as we produce more units of GDP with less energy inputs and less CO2 outputs. And, thanks to our newfound abundance of shale gas, this June our emissions hit a 25-year low. So while the Chicken Littles of the modern environmental movement run around claiming that the sky is falling, remember that the United States is growing, greener, and will continue to do so with or without Pruitt at the helm of the EPA.
