Today, amid controversy and public outcry, Scott Pruitt resigned as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A vocal climate change denier, in February 2017 the U.S. Senate voted to confirm Pruitt as the head of the EPA.
"Pruitt never respected the critical role EPA has to play in safeguarding Americans from the very real impacts of climate change and toxins such as pesticides, and this made him unfit to lead the agency," said Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of Center for Food Safety. "It's a great relief that he has resigned."
Pruitt spent his time at the EPA spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on himself, his friends, family, and industry lobbyists while unraveling the crucial environmental regulations put into place by the Obama administration's EPA. Scott Pruitt is currently the subject of at least 13 federal investigations.
The EPA cannot function if it's led by someone who doesn't believe that human activities, like carbon dioxide emissions, are a primary contributor to climate change, as Pruitt said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" in March 2017. A study in Scientific Reports examining Pruitt's claim that there has been "leveling off of warming" pronounced his claims false. Nevertheless, Pruitt removed the Climate Change section of the EPA's website, which had existed for twenty years, and took down nearly 60% of the agency's online climate change resources.
When EPA's scientists pushed back against Pruitt's claims, he responded by removing them from EPA advisory panels. He replaced them with scientists recommended by lobbyists who were also renting Pruitt a Washington, D.C. condo for a ridiculously below-market rate of $50 per night. Pruitt's tenure at the EPA was full of conflicts-of-interest and irresponsible spending on himself, while cutting the agency's budget and staff to make it a shell of its former self.
Similarly, whenever EPA officials raised concerns about Pruitt's management of the agency, he got rid of them. Five EPA officials were reassigned, demoted, or pushed out of the EPA after they spoke out against Pruitt's management style. Pruitt and his top aides kept secret calendars to hide controversial meetings with industry representatives and destroyed or altered records that might reflect poorly on him, going so far as forbidding staff from taking notes during meetings.
Pruitt will be replaced by Andrew Wheeler as acting EPA administrator until a permanent replacement is nominated by President Trump and confirmed by Congress. Unlike Pruitt, Wheeler is not new to Washington and avoids the spotlight, but as a former coal lobbyist, he's no ally to environmental causes, and will likely continue Pruitt's agenda to undo as many environmental regulations as possible.
Scott Pruitt's EPA removed, relaxed, or delayed 67 environmental rules, including halting a national ban on chlorpyrifos, a pesticide found to cause brain damage in children.
Center for Food Safety will continue to watchdog Wheeler and the EPA on the agency's oversight of critical environmental laws in the coming months.
