President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt was forced to resign on July 5 after multiple ethical scandals provoked opposition to his tenure, even from some congressional Republicans. When Pruitt took over at the EPA, he was well known for his climate change denier views and close ties to the fossil fuel industry when he earlier served as Oklahoma attorney general. During that time, Pruitt had filed 14 lawsuits on behalf of Oklahoma attempting to overturn EPA air and water quality standards.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Food & Water Watch Climate and Energy Program Co-director Scott Edwards, who discusses the resignation of Scott Pruitt and the future of the EPA under his replacement, former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, who is likely to continue the Trump regime’s aggressive agenda to dismantle the agency.
SCOTT EDWARDS: Scott Pruitt came in, of course, to implement Trump’s agenda, which was to dismantle the EPA, dismantle regulatory protections on on the environment. The only thing I can say about Scott Pruitt is he was such a bumbling person and so incompetent, I mean he’s done a tremendous amount of damage, but many of the things that he tried to do to dismantle environmental protection, he did it in a really reckless, haphazard way and thankfully the courts have stopped some of it and it might be temporary. But, he certainly has made his mark in the time he’s been head of EPA. He’s begun a lot of processes and completed some that are going to have devastating impacts, unless we turn it around very, very quickly.
BETWEEN THE LINES: So there’s a lot of concern now with the acting EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler, who’s taken over on what could be a temporary or permanent basis. We’re not sure yet, but he’s a former coal lobbyist. Tell us a little bit about Andrew Wheeler’s history and insider status in Washington.
SCOTT EDWARDS: Right. Well, while he’s got some things in common with Pruitt and, that is as you indicate, that he has a lot of strong ties to industry. In the case of Pruitt, he had strong ties, not only to oil and gas industry, but to industrial ag operators, particularly companies like Tyson food and other big corporations. Wheeler, has strong, strong ties to the coal industry and Massey Coal in particular, with the coal lobbyists, so they share that – those ties to corporate polluters, to polluting entities that are supposed to be regulated by the EPA. Where they differ – and, this is what makes Wheeler in many senses, much more dangerous than Pruitt. And as I said, Pruitt sort of bumbled his way through a lot of these things and ended up out – well, he should have been out long ago – but ended up out of the job.
Wheeler has played inside Washington. He does understand Washington. He was a staffer for Inhofe, a senator, a Republican senator who might be the worst senator on the environment. Certainly the worst sitting senator on the environment, perhaps the worst senator on the environment in, in many, many decades. So Wheeler is much more astute, much smarter than Pruitt, and he understands how Washington works, how Congress works. He will not be caught playing and blasting his sirens on the way to lunch. He will not be buying used mattresses from the Trump Hotel. He won’t be doing any of those fool-hardy, ridiculous things that Pruitt did. He’s going to be quiet, he’s going to be smart and he’s going to implement the same policies that Pruitt has started to implement and has tried to implement.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Have groups like yours, like Food and Water Watch and many other environmental groups across the country come up with an effective strategy to push back on the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to dismantle the EPA and protect polluters?
SCOTT EDWARDS: Ultimately, what we’re going to have to do to survive this administration and this EPA is to change what Congress looks like. We still have a separation of powers in this country that doesn’t exist right now because we have a one-party government in place at all levels. And now we’re losing the Supreme Court. But this makes the November elections so much more critical because Congress can control EPA if Wheeler enacts or passes or proposes bad regulations, a affirmative, aggressive, progressive Congress can step up and enact laws that override the regulations that EPA tries to put in place.
So, we take them to court and we have to fight to build political power to make sure there’s some real oversight over EPA and that Congress is in power to stop Andrew Wheeler from doing what he wants to do, which is an enact Trump’s extremely devastating policies.
