In an interview, while he was attending an oil industry conference in Houston, where he planned to speak, EPA head Scott Pruitt was asked by CNBC host Joe Kernan if he thought carbon dioxide was a “primary contributor” to climate change.
“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,” Scott Pruitt said. “But we don’t know that yet … we need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis,” he added.
And this is the man who was confirmed by our GOP-majority Congress to lead a federal agency whose primary mission is to protect the water we drink and the air we breathe, Engadget wrote that while his answer was “a bit fuzzy” and merged with a broader attempt to cast doubt on the science behind climate change, it was still “unflattering.”
His answer also goes against the EPA’s conclusions in a 2009 report that stated greenhouse gas emissions “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” because they cause warming. I suppose it could be said that Pruitt’s opinions on climate change are because he isn’t a scientist, or is not interested in science. He probably isn’t even sure of what CO2 really is.
Pruitt also disagrees with the consensus of scientists around the world who have studied the issue and agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, primarily formed by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activity, are the main cause of climate change.
And this is strange because, at his confirmation hearing, Pruitt said that he believes climate change is real. Well, surprise, surprise – he lied. Environmentalists are still calling him a climate-denier, and with good reason. The Hill suggests that based on his comments today, he probably wants to undo the EPA’s 2009 “endangerment finding.”
ArsTechnica is concerned by the seeming indifference to scientific studies that point to greenhouse gas emissions as being behind climate change. And in Scott Pruitt’s case, this indifference to expertise and accurate scientific evidence has no place in a science-driven federal agency.
