WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Earlier Thursday, the incoming president’s transition team announced that Trump will nominate Pruitt, currently attorney general for the state of Oklahoma, as EPA administrator.
"As Oklahoma’s attorney general, he wants America to develop fossil fuels, which means oil, natural gas, coal," Olson said of Pruitt on Thursday. "He also wants wind and solar power, and geothermal biomass, but he also wants to make sure they play in the market, not with subsidies. He’s going to make sure that EPA works with states as opposed to being a weapon against states."
Olson, a Texas Republican who serves as chairman of the House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and power, asserted that the EPA and other federal regulatory agencies often impose rules that states consider unreasonable in their scope or implementation cost.
"Right now, they come to states and say, ‘Do this, do this, do this,’ and our states are saying: ‘I live here. I care more about the clean air, clean water in my state than you do up in DC, so let me decide for my state what I need, please,’" the congressman said.
Pruitt, an avowed climate-change skeptic who as Oklahoma’s chief lawyer has sued the EPA over the impact of its rules on his oil-producing state, was quoted in the release as saying he plans to run the agency "in a way that fosters both responsible protection of the environment and freedom for American businesses."
Environmental groups on Wednesday sharply criticized Trump’s expected selection of Pruitt, saying his anti-EPA litigation and rejection of the scientific consensus about climate change make him unfit to lead the agency tasked with overseeing compliance with federal clean-air and clean-water laws.
