Washington Watch: A Science Denier Now Heads the EPA
Based on his vast experience in politics and lawsuits against the agency he now heads, Scott Pruitt (Trump’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency) last week publicly denied that the increased carbon dioxide humans have pumped into the atmosphere is driving 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,” Pruitt told a television interviewer. “[W]e don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.”
In reality, of course, there no longer is any debate within the serious scientific community about this fundamental conclusion. Pruitt’s assertion is either a statement of spectacular ignorance for the confirmed head of our nation’s most important environmental agency, or a cynical way to deny responsibility for the catastrophic consequences of environmentally destructive policies.
As is often the case with the president he serves, it’s hard to be certain whether Pruitt’s science denial represents complete scientific illiteracy or raw political opportunism. Either way, the disastrous consequences for our nation and world will be the same if this ignorance is allowed to prevail.
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