The New Head of the EPA Is a Dangerous, Science-Denying Buffoon

Scott Pruitt is perhaps an unconventional choice, shall we say, to head Donald Trump's EPA, considering how often he sued the agency during his tenure as Oklahoma's attorney general. But the fact that his agenda for addressing climate change might differ from that held by progressives doesn't make him unfit to lead the agency or anything like that. After all, reasonable people can disagree about the best policy responses to a given problem. What's important is that by working from the same set of basic facts, we can work together to arrive at an optimal—wait, WHAT DID THAT MAN JUST SAY?

If you're sitting there fervently wishing that your ears deceive you:

ANCHOR: Do you believe that it's been proven that [carbon dioxide] is the primary control knob for climate? Do you believe that?

PRUITT: I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact. So no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don't know that yet. We need to continue the review and analysis.

Sure, except for the fact that after dedicating decades of exhaustive research to this issue, the scientific community long ago concluded that carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the burning of fossil fuels are absolutely behind the alarming, distressing, holy-shit-you-guys-can-we-go-to-Mars-yet spikes in global temperatures over the last half-century or so. There is no empirical support for the position that there is "disagreement about the degree of impact." For God's sake, as a withering Washington Post headline pointed out, Pruitt's statements are easily refuted by information available on the web site of the agency he runs.

It's one thing for Pruitt, a longtime stooge of the oil and gas industry, to believe that addressing climate change shouldn't be a priority of the government, or that the EPA has bigger fish to pluck from the world's rapidly-warming oceans and fry, or that the agency can ease some regulations without meaningfully exacerbating global warming, or something like that. But to casually deny this bedrock principle of climate change discourse is, to use a scientific term, fucking lunacy. Pruitt's assertion is roughly the equivalent of watching the entire OJ: Made in America documentary and then solemnly musing to your friends afterwards, "You know, I wonder if they'll ever catch the real killers."

The last EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, had this to say about Pruitt's takes, presumably after reluctantly deleting all the expletives that appeared as if by magic throughout her first draft:

“The world of science is about empirical evidence, not beliefs,” Gina McCarthy, the EPA’s most recent administrator, said in a statement. “When it comes to climate change, the evidence is robust and overwhelmingly clear that the cost of inaction is unacceptably high. Preventing the greatest consequences of climate change is imperative to the health and well-being of all of us who call Earth home.”

She added, “I cannot imagine what additional information the Administrator might want from scientists for him to understand that.”

It continues to be a national embarrassment that the United States, up until now, has been the only developed country in the world in which climate change is treated as a matter for legitimate political debate instead of a fact of modern life that merits nonpartisan cooperation, scientific study, and decisive intervention. Now, the guy who is supposed to facilitate that conversation doesn't even think there's a reason to talk in the first place. Pro tip: Buy land in the mountains. At this rate, you'll have an ocean view soon enough.

Watch Now: The Conspiracy Theory Crisis