Given the kind of president that Donald Trump is, the nomination of a man like Scott Pruitt to head the EPA is no surprise. While holding public office in Oklahoma, Pruitt filed suit after suit against the EPA.
This man wants to lower air and water quality standards that were designed to protect human health.
But why?
Scott Pruitt has multiple ties with the fossil fuel industry, even taking unknown amounts of money from them. We don’t know how much money he has taken, because until recently, he would not reveal the extent of his communications with the dirtiest industry in the United States.
That situation is in flux, and in the wake of a recent court order in Oklahoma, he will have to release 3000 emails.
This may give us some idea as to how corrupt and malicious of a person he is.
A Gang of Thugs
President Trump seems to care nothing for the nation that was stupid enough to believe the lies that are his stock and trade.
His cabinet is stuffed with people that would fit into the same mold that cast him. Billionaires, liars and self-serving psychopaths.
Scott Pruitt is a perfect addition to this rouges gallery of wanton social and environmental destruction.
Loathsome Travesty
The idea that people like Donald Trump or Scott Pruitt would be let near a governmental structure of any kind is a sobering reminder of the dire condition in the The United States.
But for them to be at the very top of the filthy heap is a symbol of just how far the nation has fallen. It was never a great nation, but in its present state it is one step away from full-blown bedlam.
Scott Pruitt was confirmed as head of the EPA in recent days. This act is a cause for alarm.
More than 800 of the EPA’s employees protested against his nomination. Apparently they didn’t think a man who spent his time as attorney general of Oklahoma suing the EPA should be given control over it.
From a Trumpian perspective it is completely logical.
Trump hates any kind of limits to his ability to rape the environment for profit, so getting a man who knows how to disassemble the only agency that is standing in his way is perfect.
This situation is twisted.
The outright betrayal of our most valuable resources is afoot, and I am not just talking about breathable air and drinkable water.
The US federal government is morphing into a political structure that has been known mostly by puppet states and nations so poor that 90% of Americans couldn’t name the continent they are on.
The Road To Hell Was Paved By President Trump
Scott Pruitt is just the kind of leader who is going to make America great again.
President Trump’s vision of American greatness is one where there are no regulations to protect anyone but the wealthy elite that have made corrupt agreements with him.
Scott Pruitt will tell you how great coal fired power plants are while he stuffs his vile pockets with money from the fossil fuel industry.
This kind of behavior is reprehensible, and it is amazing that these people are somehow not incarcerated.
This dirty energy shill has been at it since day one.
As soon as he got into office as the Attorney General of Oklahoma, Pruitt disintegrated the Environmental Protection Unit under his jurisdiction. At the time he said that, “a standalone unit was operationally inefficient.”
He went on to say that the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality should look after the environment, while he spent his time suing the EPA with public money.
Scott Pruitt attacked the EPA 14 times between 2010 and 2016 and never got a case to stick.
In 2012 he went after the EPA over the their Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. This is a body of regulations that limit the amount of mercury, cyanide and other pollutants that power plants can legally emit.
The people of Oklahoma were not being damaged by clean-er air. But his corporate backers would have won big if he had been able to get those regulations changed.
He also tried to weasel out of the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. This caps the amounts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that power plants can emit.
Almost all of these 14 cases had Oklahoma energy companies listed as co-parties to his demented, toxic lawsuits.
Pruitt publicly trumpets his obvious antagonism for the EPA.
Scott Pruitt states on his bio page as Oklahoma AG that he is a, “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”
Now he is being given the power to do what he did in Oklahoma to the EPA and the United States.
This man is in essence an employee of the entrenched fossil fuel industry.
He has done nothing to hide his allegiance to energy companies like Exxon and Devon Energy. From those two companies alone he raised $300,000 for his campaigns.
Though in his last election he ran unopposed.
The New York Times ran a story that described how Scott Pruitt dropped a state lawsuit against companies dumping pollutants into the waterways in Oklahoma. They believe he, “has advocated and stood up for the profits of business,”.
With the kind of track record he has, it is hard to disagree and maintain a clear vision of reality.
Trumpian Dystopia
The kind of greatness that President Trump is the architect of is horrific.
What he is pushing on the United States from a seat in the White House is one of the most toxic agendas that has been seen in the post WW2 world, in any country.
Donald Trump has stacked the highest levels of the US government with people who no idea of social responsibility.
When Scott Pruitt was asked about his decision to use a letter drafted by Devon Energy as the basis for a verbatim legal action from his office as AG of Oklahoma, he responded that, “That’s actually called representative government in my view of the world,”.
Scott Pruitt has a view of the world that puts profit in front of human health. He is a monstrous example of what the world corporate state can engender, and he should be in prison.
In President Trump’s “Great America”, he is in charge of protecting the environment he is hell-bent on destroying.
This is not idle speculation, nor it is a commentary of Scott Pruitt at a personal level. I am simply commenting on the political structure that would put a man like this at the head of the EPA.
This reeks of revolutionary absurdity.
The Retardation of Progress
Corruption engenders both excess and inefficiency.
In this case, the Trumpian agenda to support obsolete energy technology will put the United States at the back of the pack among the developed nations.
The rest of the world is investing in sustainable solutions when it comes to power generation. Even China is moving away from coal.
For those of you who didn’t know, coal is what England used to power the first industrial revolution in the history of the modern world.
They also used child labor and steam engines made by the brilliant Mr. Watt. Which is where the measure of “watts” comes from.
In the late 18th century digging up black rocks and burning them was the state of our art.
But we have come a long way.
Now it is time to take advantage of the last 200 years of technological progress and start phasing out energy sources that hurt people.
We need to do it for the same reason we stopped using children as labor.
It’s wrong.
Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt don’t see the world that way. They see the support of dangerous energy technology as an economic good.
But they are wrong there too.
Wind and solar generation can easily compete with coal and fossil fuels, in many cases they are cheaper.
By preventing a fair and competitive marketplace for energy generation, these people are condemning the residents of the United States to dirty and dangerous power sources.
We can debate climate change if you like, but no sane person would argue the health effects of burning coal.
The fumes are toxic and the residual materials are radioactive. The deplorable conditions that coal miners work under are also a social blight.
They, and their children, would be far better off building solar cells and wind turbines.
It’s time to relegate coal to the annals of history, it could join things like racism, slavery and child labor.
The sooner, the better.
