iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, is testifying Wednesday morning at his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill, telling lawmakers that climate change is no hoax and acknowledging that human activity is a contributing factor to the phenomenon.
“Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some manner impacts that change,” he told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact and what to do about it are subject to continuing debate and dialogue, and well it should be.”
Responding later to one senator’s question about whether he agrees with President-elect Trump’s past declaration of climate change as “a hoax,” Pruitt said, “I do not believe that climate change is a hoax.”
Pruitt, 48, a Kentucky native, previously argued that global warming is not a scientifically settled phenomenon.
“Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time,” he wrote last year in a National Review opinion piece. “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.”
He also told lawmakers today that his role at the EPA would be to “make things regular” as the administrator of the nation’s environmental regulations, and that he believes the EPA plays a vital role in ensuring water and air quality, as well as enforcement on matters that cross state lines.
Trump, in a YouTube video announcing his priorities for his first 100 days in office, pledged, “On energy, I will cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy, including shale energy and clean coal, creating many millions of high-paying jobs.”
Pruitt was also expected to receive tough questioning from Democrats over his multiple suits against the EPA (some of which are still active) and his self-description as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda” on the attorney general website.
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