TRUMP PICKS PROMINENT CLIMATE SKEPTIC AS EPA CHIEF

President-elect Donald Trump is poised to name Scott Pruitt, a prominent skeptic of climate science and an ardent foe of government action on climate change, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to media reports. Pruitt, the attorney general of Oklahoma, has been a leading architect of legal opposition to President Barack Obama’s climate and environmental policies.

“Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time,” Pruitt and Luther Strange, the attorney general of Alabama, wrote in a May opinion piece in National Review, criticizing plans by some state attorneys general to investigate fossil fuel companies. “That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged—in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”

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