Seriously. Pruitt the most corrupt of all these cabinet weasels. Does he really think he can hide from us his obsequience to big oil ?? I long to see his perp walk.
36
Dereliction of Duty: the Scott Pruitt Story
21
Of all of the Trump abominations, his anti-science stance is the most un-American of them all. We don't need no stinkin' facts.
26
Why are we waiting for total destruction and irreversible damage to the planet? Pruitt needs to be removed and eliminated. To allow him to continue is a crime against humanity.
26
No science at the EPA, no management at the VA, no education at Education. The slobbering buffoons who voted to "shake things up" have actually gotten a "break things up." Our country is in ruin, in just a year.
39
There seems to be no end to the traitorous, treasonous, greedy, lying, self dealing people willing to compromise all of their morals and ethics for this administration. They prostrate themselves to the Koch’s, Mercers, Sinclair’s, Murdochs, and Evangelicals and accept appointments they must know they are supremely unqualified for yet they accept and the congress ratifies.
It is all so infuriating. Vote in November like your life depends on it - because it does.
40
It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.
15
Scott Pruitt (and by extension the empty headed fool in the Oval Office) is a menace to the future of every American alive and yet to be so.
27
Republicans are so determined to drive us off the cliff.
21
There’s another word the MSM avoid: CORRUPTION.
19
Haven't seen it printed in the NYT, but Thur. a federal judge dismissed Exxon Mobile's attempt to stop the attorneys general in NY & Mass. from investigating its alleged fraud regarding what Corp. officials knew about CC. and when.
Exxon's own studies and scientists knew in the '70's that burning fossil fuels impacted the planted in unhealthy, unsustainable ways. Exxon then proceeded to deny and sow doubt for decades to the tune of $$$billions spent in lies.
The current crooks and grifters occupying our Gov. is a travesty. But the resistance and steps forward do continue.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/380939-judge-dismisses-exxo...
https://insideclimatenews.org/content/Exxon-The-Road-Not-Taken
20
This is the first administration in my 65+ years that can be described as willfully and proudly ignorant; we must vote them back to the primitive caves from which they crawled.
34
Scott Pruitt, and his enablers, are murderers, and should be indicted, and tried, as such.
19
Time to acknowledge Pruitt and his ilk are nothing more than a criminal organization and that there will come a day, hopefully not too far off, when their crimes will be recognized as a form of racketeering. As for Pruitt: Lock him up.
28
This is what happens when the non-ideological rational and reasonable majority of the Country betrays their civic responsibility.
Oh sure there are excuses - most fueled by the darker-forces - the superb Right Wing propaganda machine - Goebbels smiling down and Zhdanov weeping.
"They're all the same" "Good golly what a bunch of snowflakes" "The debt, the debt" "Only 3% growth!?!" "Need radical change - any change!" the venerable "Never liked her - don't know why just never did!" - etc. etc.
Justifications for apathy/laziness/selfishness in the face of obvious mortal dangers.
Reasoning toward inaction or cavalier voting really is deplorable!
Face the facts 58% of us! We who should have fought at every turn but instead turned over the promise of our Nation's modernity, stewardship, and egalitarian prosperity. and the fate of the World in some sense to the 42% of us who will allow irrationality, greed, bigotry, plutocracy and demagoguery.
A 42% not unintelligent at all - but still full of those that for psychological reasons think martial law would be a good thing, think 600K clumps of cells per year or owning an assault weapon is more important than anything, think their fantasies trump scientific reasoning/facts, etc.
Shame on you 58% - too many of you within that group - for allowing this abomination!
Reclaim your pride and honor! Vote - vote the GOP out. Reconstitute sanely, properly , civilly, honestly Conservative and Progressive Parties later.
16
Scott ''send the pollution downstream"Pruitt (his strategy for sewage runoff into Oklahoma rivers and streams)........is perfectly foisted on the NEW ....Environmental Pretense Agency........to aid and abet Big Oil and all other corporate polluters to damage and destroy human health and the environment without penalty....... by his EXECUTIVE DECISION ,that an organophosphate NERVE AGENT clorpyrifos(determined by EPA scientific research, to be too dangerous for current use)...........need more years of research.....because the EPAs OWN SCIENCE IS UNRELIABLE !
allowing Dow to manufacture and sell it,unregulated until 2022
Pruitt came to this decision shortly after meeting the Dow Chemical company chairman!
Organophosphate pesticides are implicated in many brain and nervous system diseases,especially in children and the elderly.........because the brain and nervous system is made of organophosphate structures !
10
I guess he doesn't care about his children or grandchildren's future on the planet. What does that say about the man, despicable!
16
Only in bizzaro Trump-world could Pruitt, a total tool of the oil, gas, and coal industry (who's completely in the pockets of Koch Bros), be "running" the EPA. Pruitt is doing his best to undermine every thing the EPA stands for.
BTW he's in the mining industry's pocket too. Pruitt's utterly unethical actions are masked by his smarmy 'who me' demeanor and outright LIEs.
Make no mistake, Pruitt, a dangerous and very ambitious man, is an enemy of anyone who thinks limiting polluter's is more important than letting industry have a free pass.
Sadly, the stoopid gullible Trump team base keeps swallowing Trump's fake news of "more jobs" and bringing back coal.
Which brings Ryan Zinke to mind. Since that bad acting phony is doing his best to destroy the Dept. of the Interior. With Zinke's 'giving in to business' policies and everything public is for sale... including him, what can go wrong?
With the likes of Pruitt, Zinke, AND Betsy DeVious, Rick-less Perry, Wilbur Ruse, Steve Munchkin, little Stevie Miller and Pence 'n Trump at the tiller of State, we are on a collusion course of titanic proportions. Kinda like how the polar ice caps and glaciers are melting...
What IS it gonna take to wake up the 30 - 40% who believe these CON men and women are MAGA when what they ARE really doing is making themselves and their big donors wealthier (at their foolish base' expense).
Gullible and stupid is the only growth 'industry' being promoted by Don Con.
VOTE Them OUT
19
I'm not naive, but I keep wondering, what is the goal? Can it really be just greed. take what we can for as long as we can because the world is going up in smoke anyway, and there's nothing we can do about it? Or are they all just incredibly stupid? Or malicious? Or blind?These folks have to know they have declared war, not only on the Americans they are meant to serve, but populations everywhere.
Where is the much vaunted American can-do spirit? Tackling problems with know-how and determination?
We must stand firm against this flagrant abuse of reason and common sense.
22
Rename Trump's E.P.A. to E.D.A., D for Destruction.
8
Love Canal 2.0, coming soon at an Industrial waste sight near you.
10
Desperate times call for extreme measures. The rules and the playing field (for legal and logical remedy) are shredded. Like a bunch of hijacked passengers on a plane, we sit at the mercy of the terrorrist .... feeling powerless and hoping it will all "just be okay in the end". Pruitt is that terrorist and I see his as a dirty rotten traitor .... and we need to fight back !
What do we have to lose ? What people need is leadership in this particular battle. How can we help to bring Pruitt down ASAP ? Who, besides our Congressman, do we beseech for legal and political action ? To stand by and read about this selfish nitwit seems like neglect and inaction in a time of crisis.
6
“This got us to searching again (we’ve been here before with Mr. Pruitt) for the word that best describes the Trump administration’s hostility to scientific inquiry.”
The most appropriate description is a phrase: “Stupid by choice!”
6
Pruitt is the real horror of Trump. Trump is an ignorant, lying, conman who is also a vulgarian and mentally unstable who displays an unhealthy obsession with President Obama, Hillary Clinton, his "bigger button," etc.
But even worse are the people who head the various governmental agencies with the intent of destroying them and the protections they provide to the environment, education, federal housing, justice department, energy etc. Pruitt, DeVos, Carson, Sessions, Perry are all cancers destroying rules, laws, etc. When Trump is removed, the garbage that he has installed in the many departments need to be removed with him.
20
We need a psychologist.
Pruitt and all the rest like him have children and will have grandchildren and future generations.
Pruitt and the others have some kind of fanatic personality that is willing to suppress what they are doing to their offspring.
3
It amazes me that these people seem to think that they do not breathe the same air, drink the same water, swim in the same oceans, or eat the same foods as the rest of us.
How stupid can these people be?
You'd think Pruitt would at least care that his wife, kids and other members of his family would be safe from the toxins he is releasing in the air, water, and food.
Apparently not.
My only hope is that Pruitt's name becomes synonymous with his actions, and that he spends the rest of his life atoning for his greed and mendacity.
11
All I know is that before November 2016, Gary IN didn’t stink. After January 2017, it’s become like the 70s.
They just don’t care about people, just money. Who cares if regulation rollbacks kill people.
Pruitt is the epitome of cronyism.
8
I hope you are happy republicans.
Your grandchildren and their children will pay dearly for this ineptitude AND they deserve it (because you have given up the ability to think for yourself).
8
Wake up! my countrymen and women, boys and girls: instead of draining the swamp, Trump's stooges in DC are swamping the drains as they work to dismantle American democracy. Compared to that clear and present danger of alt-right subversion, abortion, guns, terrorism, Syria, Korea, even the USSR (Release 2.0), are all small potatoes. Good luck, America.
PS: does anyone know whether Mrs.Hart has any more apartments to rent?
7
“Mr. Pruitt’s goal is simple: No studies, no data, no rules.”
One word that describes Pruitt is "willful."
Another word that describes Pruitt is "unethical."
A third word that describes Pruitt is "hypocrite."
How about "Pruitt is a willful unethical hypocrite."
8
Thinking people knew when the self-indulged hate spreading zealot seized the White House with a gerrymandered Republican congress, things were going to get really really bad...
But who knew that these despicable criminals would exceed those dire expectations by so much?
Show up in November... Throw out every last Republican in Congress who has aided and abetted this lying traitor in his daily attacks on America's future...
Come to think of it, that would be all of them!
17
Pruitt has go to go.
He has only a destructive agenda, following orders from his campaign contributors and not the country.
50 years of work, down the drain in a few minutes, all due to free and ignorance
Good Bye....
10
The filthy air and water left behind by Scott Pruitt and his fossil fueled cronies, will be the Trump Legacy.
The destruction of America's public schools by Betsy Devos, will be the Trump Legacy.
The selloff and destruction for profit of America's public lands by Ryan Zinke, will be the Trump Legacy.
The permanent damage caused by the daily false attacks on America's free press, will be the Trump Legacy.
The unprecedented debt left to our children as a result of the massive transfer of wealth to oligarchs and corporations, posing as "tax reform", will be the Trump Legacy.
The loss of trust from most of America's long time allies, will be the Trump Legacy.
The distrust Americans will forever feel for future administrations due to the daily barrage of lies spewed from behind the White House podium by pathological liars posing as press secretaries, will be the Trump Legacy.
The US Supreme Court, now firmly positioned for decades of rule by oligarchs and corporations, will be the Trump Legacy.
Then there is the daily dose of hate, fear, and bigotry - the daily attacks on our intelligence community - Putin, Kushner, Bannon, Roy Moore, Stormy Daniels, Ben Carson's table, the NRA, failed healthcare and trade, Wall Street deregulation, etc. etc. etc...
Trump doesn't need his useless multi-billion dollar wall strung along the Southern border to cement his Legacy... He's already accomplished that goal many many times over...
20
Imagine this guy becoming the President or AG. The governor of Oklahoma I really don’t care. This is how banana republic are made. An EPA guy who doesn’t believe in science
10
When the Democratic and environmental reckoning comes Pruitt will skulk off to a high paying K-street or big oil/coal job. He has no conscience. He has no compassion for planet earth or the billions of people who will be mortally prejudiced by the policies he propagates. He cares not a wit for the non-human life that shares our planet and makes it habitable and beautiful. He cares not for truth and scientific fact. He is a pathogen on the body politic. A worshiper of wealth and the unholy greed and power it breeds. A stark reminder that on this special weekend that Jesus died for our sins but it was not nearly enough. Because the world still spawns Pruitts. And the pulpits are too forgiving of political corruption, ignoring catastrophic evil while trying to win souls for their particular brand with inane arguments over homosexuality and same sex marriage. A mockery.
11
If I got on an airplane and had to hide because I was booed when recognized, I might think something is wrong with what I have done or said. Not Pruitt, he just wants to go to first class and chortle about the wonderful things in his mind that he has wracked on America and the world
8
This editorial points out reasons why the media and Americans need to stop focusing on the daily WH chaos, Trump's tweets, Trump's scandals, Trump's rally speeches and pay attention to the destruction happening in the cabinet at warp speed. Pruitt, Zinke, DeVos, Sessions, Mnuchin, Carson and the rest are tearing America apart daily while Ryan and McConnell are stuffing the judiciary with RW appointees that will change the fabric of America forever. Time to wake up and focus on what is important and really newsworthy instead of sex scandals and tweets.
8
"Mr. Pruitt ...astoundingly, is said to harbor presidential ambitions."
Scott Pruitt is going to jail for graft and corruption. Maybe he can be a cell block president.
10
Pruitt may not have been convicted of any crime, but make no mistake — he is a criminal.
14
There is one rule Prurient follows assiduously: fly first class whenever traveling on the People’s business at taxpayer expense.
5
Trump and his secretary personify the old adage: "don't confuse me with facts; my mind is made up."
Our last prime minister, Stephen Harper, rolled with the same attitude and it permitted him to do his best to destroy our own scientific community and to do away with what we here call the "long-form" census which succeeded in seriously compromising the integrity of the last census that he "oversaw."
No point in collecting data if certain members of your executive branch are determined to remain deaf, dumb, and blind to its relevance
Deaf, dumb, and blind people are that way all on their own, without the need of all that expensive data.
4
Republicans used to focus on fiscal conservatism. Now they focus on destroying the planet. Trump is their front man and Pruitt is the evil assistant. How can any person sit idly by while they see the our lives polluted in every way by the GOP?
7
The All new Environmental Pollution Agency is on the move to protect us....
2
Pruitt is the shame of my alma mater Colorado College where we were taught the value of scientific inquiry, wherever it leads. Each finding by NYT of Pruitt's inadequacies, greed and the harm he has perpetrated on the environmental regulations is so disenchanting. That anyone can buy into his schemes is beyond belief.
6
I love this guy. He doesn't bow to the god of Climate Change. Liberals have made this their religion. It takes tremendous faith to believe the predictions. Ultimately it is an attack on mankind. Its hatred of man. Its oppression with the goal of total control. It's a power grab of the entire earth and all of mans activities.
3
Trump and Republican running away from science is the deathknell of America’s economic dominance in the world. They will sell it (or not) as unimportant but an ignorant nation cannot lead anywhere but backwards. Congressional dominance by Republicans (corporate lackeys) sells the rope that will hang the democracy and the future of our children and grandchildren.
2
President Trump is a big little man,surrounding himself with other little men,while trying to cut the government and country down to a size that he can control. To say that everyone and everything he touches has been diminished is an understatement.
5
Pruitt is reason enough to impeach Trump -- in a sane world -- given the terrible damage Pruitt is doing to this country and this planet.
7
People like Pruitt and Trump have their enablers, the Republican Party.
4
This is OUR environment and our land, not Scott Pruitt's or Ryan Zinke's cash cow for their corporate buddies.
We need to have a nationwide March to Save the Environment and the Parks from Pruitt and Zinke.
10
The only thing coming out of epa right now is leaks from freaked out staff. To whom I say - hang in there! Don't give up. Continue to leak.
Expose the lies and the thievery (40K phone booths?), the koch bros agenda .
This too shall pass
7
People who fear knowledge, destroy knowledge.
6
I have no single words to put on Pruitt/Trump's attempts to strangle science. They are trying to destroy environmental protection, and to do that they first need to murder science, wipe it out of the affairs of the EPA. It is reminiscent of the Nazi's massive book burning. Knowledge from science is our self defense, to keep us safe from environmental harm. Trying to wipe out science reminds me of cases where burglars first cut the phone lines of the house they wish to break into and the people they plan to rob or murder. They cut the lines by which the victims are able to defend themselves. Pruitt is trying to cut the lines that communicate knowledge. The word "disdain" is an understatement. The word "fear" seems very inappropriate where the perpetrators are shockingly brazen in their intentional efforts to disastrously harm human health. Many people really will die from what they are doing. Pruitt knows it or he wouldn't be trying to cut off the reports that say so. This is very intentional.
2
The damage this administration is doing on our country as well as our planet is frightening. What's just as frightening is that by voting for Trump, Americans have done this to ourselves.,,,,Even if the 2016 election proves to be illegitimate, it may be too late to save us.
1
This is what The Swamp looks like.
No car maker is going to loosen its rules about noxious compounds pumped into our atmosphere just because the GOP swamp thinks it's a good idea. Automakers have to sell cars in other countries too and those other countries could easily force Detroit to manufacture clean engines just like California does. Oh and the people who have money to spend on cars are often sold by environmental concerns!
Let we forget that VW lied and cheated their way to dirty diesels and GM has done the same. Is this what responsible capitalism is like? No, trump wants to make sure they can lie and cheat without breaking any laws.
trump's idea of turning back the clock on every single progressive issue, whether it be the rights of women and brown people, power control by white males, or the environment, leads all sane people to conclude that the GOP (Party of No) is completely out of control.
A potential train wreck, what matters most is that we survive this summer and get out the vote in November and pluck out the trump turkey feathers.
6
One of the current denialist memes has been
promoted for quite a while by smith, pruitt, aka
the usual suspects. This is the "secrecy" ("lack of transparency") of science
data, as if there were deep conspiracies at work
that are, in fact, only realized by the funders of
skeptics such as koch freres or email thieves
from "climategate". One can stumble across such wilful/gullible ignorance within the comments section.
Scientists have, apparently, not done a sufficient
job addressing such nonsense, since there seems to be no limit to what the denialists can come up, and there is an underestimation of the political damage this stuff does by becoming alt-right and f-x "news" fodder for endless recycling that ends up being regurgitated
by trumpicans in congress, which serves as their
contribution to policy debates on climate change.
There is the apparent belief that ignoring the gibberish
is better than opposing it explicitly. I wonder how wise that is when powerful people such as smith and pruitt
feel free to repeat such idiocy in public forums without any hesitation.
The fact that these things are swallowed hook line and sinker reveals how ignorant are far too many people about how science operates, how scientists communicate, what the role of publications and data are in daily scientific behavior. In addition, it also reflects a generalized anti-elite mindset that has been
effectively packaged to focus wrath upon scientists
(as compared to industry polluters?).
And there is another word: "Deliberate" This regime intended to destroy the EPA from the day it took office.
2
I don’t care if climate change is man-made or the result of some natural phenomenon. The fact is this: pollution is bad. It kills flora and fauna. It shortens life-expectancy. You want to shorten your life? Move near and down-wind from a major urban highway. You want lead poisoning? There are zip codes where you and your children can be assured of getting it. You want fouled water? Move near any mineral extraction plant. Just as John Bolton should be forced to lead the charge if we invade NK or Iran, Scott Pruitt should be forced to live next to a coal-fired electrical plant. Cause there’s nothing bad going on there, right Scotty? So again, what have we learned? Pollution kills plants and animals. Pollution ruins air, land and water. Pollution is bad.
4
At Pruitt's EPA, there actually is a rule.
CORPORATE PROFITS.
The EPA must do anything and everything it can, to protect Corporate Profits.
That is Pruitt's "Prime Directive".
That is what the wealthy Republican Donors have paid for, and that is what the wealthy Republican Donors are going to get.
Annoying little regulations, cut into Profit Margins.
Pruitt's destruction of the EPA, is just doing what he has been paid to do.
Air. Water. Soil.
Studies. Data.
They are of no consequence, compared to Profit.
That is the rule, in Pruitt's EPA.
1
Pruitt was appointed to this department with a clear agenda in mind. He was told to do everything possible to rescind any advances President Obama made to help keep our world free from pollutants. Anyone with any knowledge of science, politics, government know he was given a directive. Not that he wasn't of that mindset already. He represented many who put profits ahead of our welfare. It has been absolutely clear since Trump got elected he is out primarily to achieve among many detrimental objectives , to reverse any of President Obamas' accomplishments. None of this is for anyone's good. The true, undeniable problem with Trumps actions are that no matter what he does , you can't undo what a great man has done. You can't take away the caring a man has shown for his country and its people. You can't take his greatness away . Untill, you are believed as he has been, unless you show true compassion and don't have to read it off a card, unless you try and improve our lives not just the rich, the conspirators who make decisions in their favor. You can't take away his goodness, his believability , his truthfulness , his morality. His success in his life is his legacy of who this man is. President Obama he still shows us who he is.
1
Left to this admin, doctors will start using BLEEDING again to heal disease. It's obvious to everyone who can walk and chew gum (which precludes Trump & Pruitt), the planet is in distress due to human activity. Our actual survival is at stake so how long must we tolerate this charade? An obsolete process (the electoral college) elected a dysfunctional admin, how long must we tolerate this insanity?
4
One word identifies the problem, Conservatism. Q: What is conservatism?
A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.
Q: What is wrong with conservatism?
A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.
2
And no pressure from the Republican-held Congress to remove an obviously compromised, unfit administrator. This entire administration needs to be removed immediately. Vacate the 2016 election. Install a technocratic administration. Redo the presidential election this November.
Regarding Pruitt's barring of federally-financed grant recipients being seated on advisory committees, it really boils down to a simple question: Why is it OK to bar scientists receiving federal dollars (public money) for research on the stated claim of 'conflict-of-interest', but it's NOT OK to question the conflict-of-interest in appointments of non-scientists and scientists receiving campaign finance dollars (private money) and grant money from groups lobbying government to relax regulations pertinent to their businesses?
How is one a conflict-of-interest, while the other is not, except on the absurd theory that government has no remit to regulate private industry and their use (or abuse) of public assets, like land, air, and water?
And if government has no remit to provide a check on modern industry's ability to influence entire biospheres, what then the point of government at all?
Mr. Pruitt, you are an avatar of extremism dressed up in the uniform of the establishment, and using the language of law and bureaucracy. But it is extremism nonetheless.
2
Doesn’t the EPA have statutory mandates that drive its mission? Isn’t Scott Pruitt abrogating his responsibility with his inactions or attempts to deconstruct the agency? If all of this is allowable behavior at the discretion of the administrator, can’t everything he does be undone by a future administrator and a new president? Congressional oversight should also come into play with this, however we’ve all seen how spineless the current Congress is when it comes to confronting TrumpWorld.
9
Someone should remind Mr. Pruitt that we have and know of only one planet (Earth) in the entire universe that supports life as we know it. If we mess it up too much without regard for our activities we will most certainly influence and/or destroy it's life sustaining qualities. These declarations are true regardless of one's views on science or its relevance to people. Pruitt might be wise to remember the Bible in which there are some words about protecting and caring for the Earth and all its peoples and beings when he decides to help industry over everything else. There's no mention in the Bible bout helping industry succeed at the expense of everyone and everything else. In short, Pruitt's views and philosophy are myopic and dangerous to the life support system we call home.
7
Does the Trump administration not realize that, in the absence of federeral regulations, individual states tend to write their own rules? As a result, a company trying to manufacture products for national distribuation ends up having to deal with 50 state-level regulations, rather than one federal regulation. A washing machine that meets Ohio standards, may not be acceptable to regulators in New York or New Mexico. Similarly, if American manufacturing standards fail to meet international expectations for energy efficiency and environmental protection, American exports will suffer. Unintended consequences, as it were.
9
Mr Pruitt let’s tell it like it is: the earth is flat, the sun revolves around the earth, and the world was created in six or seven days, I forget. And dinosaurs are alive and well in China where they dictate policy.
You remind me of the creature from the black lagoon but he was better looking. Or maybe you’re a Nexus 6 replicant with a limited life span. I sure hope so.
10
My former facility staffed with research scientists in another agency has been decimated by retirements and just plain quitting out of disgust with the Republicans and the Trump administration to move to private industry and state agencies where science is treasured and the pay and benefits are better than the federal government Friends who work or used to work at EPA report rampant political interference with science. Pruitt is the worst political appointee since James Watt during the Reagan era.
28
I would like to know who exactly has been behind picking these cabinet secretaries. I don't think Trump would have any idea who would know which regulations to target, etc. Was it Pence or somebody else working with lobbyist groups to get their suggestions and approval? I hope there are plenty of knowledgeable people left who will be there to help re-build. I will never understand why there is that persistent base of Trumpsters who aren't sickened by this, especially by EPA, Energy and Education. Their kids and grandkids will have to live with the aftermath, too.
17
First of all, the entire GOP has been bought by the fossil and other big industry's CEOs for years already, so it's the GOP, not Trump, who knows which regulations to target, as their wealthiest donors TELL them what they don't like because it could lower their capital income a bit.
All that Trump does is allowing them to do with the EPA what they want, as long as in return he can be "the president, can you believe it?".
Secondly, if you regularly watch Fox News or read Breitbart, you're constantly confronted with articles, interviews etc. of "conservative" people (often presented as "experts" whereas they aren't scientists at all) who claim that the scientific community has become totally corrupt and isn't doing its job anymore, but merely responding to liberal lobbyists.
They even come up with scientific studies proving that they're right - falsified studies, but if you don't fact-check them, you won't find out that they're falsified ... so you get more and more convinced that it's people like Pruitt who are the "good guys" ... .
And the same goes for energy and education.
That's why the problem is MUCH bigger than just Trump in the White House. It's a systemic problem, that has turned the entire conservative movement in this country into a mere shadow of itself.
All that we can do, as citizens, is to engage in real, respectful debates with GOP voters, so that more people get access to the truth, or at least start knowing how to fact-check. And voting, of course.
11
Scott Pruitt is an intellectually contemptible and morally corrupt individual. He has obviously sold his mind and soul to the Koch Brothers and to their ideology. He has no moral compass and spends money lavishly on himself traveling and acts like a secretive bureaucrat in his sound insulated Office.
He has no place in controlling and shaping American
environmental and health policy since he is closed minded, biased, and corrupt. He needs to be dismissed immediately from his position and replaced by a qualified scientifically trained administrator who will trust science and facts and will take seriously the critical mission of his agency. Of course this won't happen in this abominable and intellectually bankrupt administration.
God help us! When will impeachment start?
234
I believe that this president and his group are having a very deleterious effect on every aspect of human life. But that is not a strong enough word. POISONOUS tops them all.
16
Welcome to Pope Urban VIII's world. I long for the good old days of Wally and the Beav.
4
Pruitt needs to go and soon. He is secretive, clearly violates the duties of his post by catering to industry, and a climate-change denier. This is truly one of the worst appointments in this sorry administration, and Trump has been quietly signing away all of the legislative strides accomplished by previous administrations. Reading this week's article about Pruitt in the New Yorker has made my stomach turn. Pruitt's economic arguments don't even hold water. On the anniversary of Rachel Carson, we can do better than Scott Pruitt and his ilk.
17
"disdain" and "fear" work, but it's IRRITATION that most fits any science (or anything else) that does not support, nay endorse policies or even the whims of the trump presidency (whether he is right or wrong, his arrows true or stray).
in essence it is the prime habit of the closed mind (which is not to day such a device cannot be opened, see reagan's shift from "axis of evil" to "let's talk" and trump's own journey from "no way" to why not?" with north korea).
what NYT needs to do in the face of all this is to give up on the reduction of everything to a trump dump and pound away on these issues, making the research that annoys the white house, the basis for relentless reporting and public proclamation
...the science mind, the valid findings, not the fallacious argument of ad hominum attack...it's lazy journalism and poor public service...we need to be more familiar with the facts than the feud.
6
But how has shining more light on the data and the facts mattered to the likes of Pruitt, Zinke, and Trump? They'd only buried their heads deeper.
"This too will pass." It's so painful reading about this fool. I long for the day when he is out of office and can no longer threaten our climate in a major way. The problem is, the damage he is doing will live after him.
6
UN has war crimes and people are put behind bars for that.
Mr. Pruitt is commiting crime against humanity and mother nature by his actions.
Unfortunately, he can’t be tried under incompetent WH adminstration nor the congress.
We will all suffer due to his actions.
7
"... scientists who receive or had received federal research grants would be barred from serving on the agency’s nearly two dozen scientific advisory committees. The purpose, he said, was to eliminate conflicts of interest ..."
Yet people who have financial gain as a goal and no experience whatsoever doing experiments, don't have a conflict of interest? This is Trump and crew personified. Trump is a "stable genius", a very smart man who doesn't need scientific data input since science can be wrong.
Never mind that our living standards raised from 18th Century farmhouses to 21st Century solar power, fracking, led illumination, reliable cars with radar safety, and smart electronics is utterly dependent on the successes and accuracy of science and the engineering skills that are anchored to the science.
The President couldn't Tweet without science. He apparently doesn't realize that. He's much too stupid.
9
Once again the pro-life party shows its true colors.
10
That should be "color"--it only has one.
1
Well, we as a people are pretty much doomed by our own stupidity. It will be amusing to see how Trump supporters manage to blame Obama as they die of asthma and their kids cancer rates skyrocket. Hopefully a few thousand years after the great human die-off the planet will be able to heal itself. I wish this was sad nihlistic hyperbole, but the data, sociology and rational thinking suggests it is not.
6
The guy in the White House made his priorities very clear before the election. Real Americans have revealed their beliefs, and our descendants will reap the “rewards”.
3
Does he not know that his own children will reap the maelstrom he was sown?
3
Wealthy GOP donors and their puppets such as Pruitt clearly believe that their money will allow them to protect their children and grand-children from the worst consequences of their decisions.
That's precisely what "winning" means for them.
Of course, that's the exact opposite of putting "America" first.
But in their worldview, lying is the best way to get what you want, for yourself, so there's absolutely no reason not to lie - that too is now called, in the GOP's newspeak, "winning".
Under Obama the EPA was somehow exempt from using basic Cost/Benefit analysis to evaluate their job killing regulations. .........
1
Scott Pruitt isn't stupid...he's evil and cares little for his fellow Americans as he allows industry to foul the air and the earth for profit.
Scores of Earthquakes have reduced the value of homes in Oklahoma. Ground zero for man made earthquakes, the result of fracking - not to mention poisoning the groundwater. The result is damage, sometimes severe to tens of thousands homes not covered by insurance.
These folks have seen a dramatic decrease in the value of their homes and property, a direct result of Pruitt's actions. I understand why he has a huge security detail, needs a sound proof booth in his office and fears traveling with "the little people".
Good luck, Scott, "the chickens will come home to roost."
10
We have voted ourselves into a Malthusian extinction. Weaponized psychoanalytic propaganda from Cambridge Analytics, Facebook, and Fox News has made fools of us. We too gullible for our children to have a viable future. The United States of Corporations has replaced America.
4
I say, let him go back to Oklahoma. If the good people there elect him governor, that'll save the rest of us in the other 49 states.
5
Yay Pruitt! It's about time somebody with some common sense leads the EPA.
4
Time to start using accurate vocabulary.
These people are not in denial, they are perfectly aware of the facts. They are simply greedy. They are masters at getting us to believe that they are excusably ignorant and craftily challenging established wisdom, both at the same time.
This is a well-worn technique of power freaks, to create cognitive dissonance and leave us stunned, confused and distracted.
How many hours have you wasted debating their motives instead of simply saying, as the young lives marchers do, NO. If you hurt my environment to line your pockets, I am voting you out.
7
Heads in the sand from people who never grasped high school basics.
5
This is nothing new or surprising; this government’s reason for existing is to make money for its members and friends. They say their actions are to preserve jobs for their middle class (white voters), but that will only occur if the bosses see it in their own self interest. Of course they don’t care about science as long as it stands in the way of piling up short term riches. It is time to quit being shocked, shocked; these people will take as much as they can for as long as they can. If it is to stop, voters who haven’t drunk the koolaide must show up in November or we can only be shocked by our own actions.
4
Singlehandedly, Pruitt can inflict more everlasting environmental damage upon this nation. Potentially his irreversible, negative impact upon all living things, is greater than anyone in this country right now.
Scott Pruitt is an extremely evil and very dangerous man. I hope he gets canned. Soon.
5
And do you predict that the President would choose someone better?
Are there studying analyzing if a birth place, say Oklahoma or Kansas, once experienced human-induced environmental disaster, say, Dust Storm or Earthquake, is more liked to produce traumatized babies that hate Mother Nature?
This is what happens when you put an evangelical Christian in charge of an organization whose total responsibility is to go where the science takes it. Scott Pruitt is incapable of managing the E.P.A. He believes God gave Man the Earth to do with it as he pleases. I read elsewhere in this forum how maintaining clean air and clean water are liberal-progressive ideas. The author of that posting should be Pruitt's deputy. He could fly next to Pruitt in first class.
6
Just what can one expect from an administration headed(?) by trompe(sic) l'oeil?
The French have his name spelled correctly He is truly an optical illusion of trickery and deceit.
1
An America that abandons science is lost.
A government that has no scientific counsel is a sham.
What is the game plan?
4
Pruitt is your typical Trump appointee, beholden to corporate mythology, influence and fake news. Should we be surprised at all that a president who relies on totally partisan political news outlets for direction would hire the likes of Pruitt. As usual when all is said and done the left will once again be charged with undoing the environmental regression caused by taking forsaking responsibility for corporate greed.
2
This editorial accusers the Trump administration of having created a culture of fear, where those who don't hold to administration-supported dogma are afraid to make their opinions known. In this editorial, the EPA is the poster child for such a toxic work environment.
Perhaps there's an element of truth. But one cannot help but wonder whether editorial boards that live in glass houses should exercise restraint before throwing stones.
The New York Times in general, and its editorials in particular, are quick to publicly ridicule any who do not uphold without question the accepted dogma that human activity is the major cause of global warming. Any who voice any sort of doubt are quickly labeled with terms like "deniers," the same term in the phrase "holocaust deniers." Any attempt to provide even a modicum of balance is rejected as "false equivalence."
The large majority of scientists do believe that humans are responsible for global warming, and it is reasonable to believe this is likely true, and to report the news with this in mind. But the Times too often goes overboard; it's not accurate to say this thesis is "proven." There have been innumerable times when accepted science was later to found to be wrong, often with great consequence.
The Times should encourage professional behavior in government, including the EPA. The Times should also exercise maturity in its own editorials and reporting.
5
Without the EPA our cities would be like Beijing; with air pollution so thick and toxic that people die every day.
Without the FDA companies would sell poison for profit.
But... Donald Trump is compelled to reverse every step forward and retreat to the dark ages.
3
the people who voted from Trump need to realize something: not only they won't get those "jobs" that made them vote for Trump but this administration is going to kill us all, slowly or quick ( touch of a bottom). Its obvious that Pruitt is working on behalf of big companies and does not care about the citizens of this country and the rest of the world. Because our accions will also harm the rest of the world. I am just praying that Pruitt will make a mistake and therefore obliged to quit. That is our only chance for us, For EPA and the scientific community working so hard for a better world
2
Help us NY Times! What can we, as concerned citizens, do to stop this maniac? Pruitt's M.O. from the beginning was to dismantle the EPA and discredit scientific fact, which he is achieving at a breakneck pace. I applaud the media for highlighting some of the most egregious acts by Pruitt, but this information needs to be more public. Pruitt must go. Americans need to understand that the policy rollbacks that Pruitt is pursuing "under the radar" of the other Trump "crisis du jours" will have irrevocable consequences for the voting and nonvoting generations alike. It is no surprise that Pruitt has 24/7 security, far greater than any EPA or other agency chief. Pruitt is a disgusting disgrace to the democratic process, and the achievements made by past administrations to protect our air, land, water and natural resources.
4
At some point, denial becomes a crime.
5
This is all part of the extreme right wing Koch/Mercer Bannon plan to "deconstruct" America. Pruitt was hired because he hates the EPA. no surprises here. Children living with poisoned air, poisoned water ..or being shot in schools with automatic weapons...all part of the Trump World. There is no defense whatsoever for supporting Trump.
6
The thing is to support the use of the scientific method for understanding our world and the universe you have to be able accept that sometimes things you want to be so are not so. This is counter to what the evil clown needs in order to feel powerful and to maximize his greed.
2
None of this comes as any surprise. Pruitt is & always has been a shill for the energy industry. And he's part of the current trend in suppressing science/facts in favor of returning us to the Dark Ages. For example, Pruitt has been a key participant in trying to keep the state of Oklahoma from officially acknowledging that fracking is causing rampant earthquakes (some of which have been strong enough to be felt here in SW Missouri.) For Pruitt, the truth is like pouring salt on a slug.
2
To be accurate: fracking is not the cause of Oklahoma's earthquakes. The earthquakes are caused by conventional oil drilling, which nowadays involves pumping millions of gallons of water into the oilfield to evict the remaining oil and gas.
Until that technology was developed, those fields were considered depleted. Now that it's here, Oklahoma has earthquakes.
Yet another example of private taking of public property (knowingly or not). No one bought a house in Oklahoma 10 years ago thinking they would be in an earthquake zone. The oil industry is provoking the earthquakes, but is not compensating the public for the damage, inconvenience, injury, and death.
2
Again and again, the best word that suits Trump & Co are traitors. At each turn they betray the better interests of the people they are supposed to protect and serve, nevermind humanity itself.
5
The focused effort of this administration to deny science and technology that interferes with corporate profits is among its most dangerous attributes. Discrediting public science will only lead to adverse consequences for everyone and reduce the pool of scientists willing to stay in public service. The insidious transparency of Pruit and the absence of congressional outcry sends us back to medieval times and should be than enough impetus to "throw the bums out!"
4
Pruitt could actually do the world a service with his anti-science Christian approach to policy by ending the torture of millions of laboratory animals that EPA conducts or funds in pseudo-scientific, inhumane and ultimately useless toxicology tests that are inordinately unreliable in translating to regulating chemicals and "protecting" human health.
1
We demand that "science" be at the core of our medical and other technological issues. If your kid is sick, you want to get care that is based on the best knowledge we can get. Same thing with the airliners we ride in. Not to say this is easy or straight forward, but that should be the goal. To ignore or reject data because we have an agenda based on our prejudices and politics is to court disaster. The irony, is that, for example, when it comes to say immigration, the administration could probably make a scientific case to reduce it based on the science that increasing the u.s. population by any means, is probably the worst thing that can happen to the environment and increases GW more than almost anything we can do, but that would mean having to drop the racial tinged reasons they spout now. As many Americans will trudge off to church services this weekend to pray to gods invented when we were supposedly far more primitive and ignorant than we are now, I'm not surprised that science is discarded the first time it butts up against our superstitious underpinnings or "gut feelings".
1
Pruitt was in the past and is still now a paid mouth for the fossil fuel industry. He and his enablers care nothing about science only the profits of the unfettered fossil fuels.
Obviously, with this group they wish to return to the pollution of our past, we do remember the, lakes, rivers, smokestacks and landfills.
Trump is first and foremost a businessman concerned with his own profits, so he is repulsed by Regulations. The very Regulations that are for the public good.
We live in the never-never land of stupidity. Air to breath and water to drink should not stand in the way of profits.
2
This editorial is a welcome spotlight on this evil man - who not only hides the proof of what harms our environment, he actively promotes activity that destroys it.
I have two questions:
1. How on fractured earth could Pruitt be electable in Oklahoma, after aggressively helping fracking companies cause daily earthquakes in the state?? Please, Oklahoma, pull a Doug Jones and reject this man and help usher him out of politics.
2. Can the earth bring a lawsuit on behalf of itself against the Environmental Protection Agency for failure to protect? Or shouldn't it be a felony for GOP-driven deregulation to attack the earth? The GOP made corporations people with Citizens United - so why can't the earth have the sane legal standing?
115
Wake up people. When are you going to realize that all of what Trump is doing is aimed at his plan for complete takeover. The most essential part of that is the destruction of all existing democratic institutions that are in place and which he is accomplishing quite nicely thank you. Attack the FBI, the Justice Dept., the Judiciary, the Education Dept., the State Dept, etc. etc. etc. (which by the way is the essential core of the philosophy of Steve Bannon) He has the Republicans on his side to protect him because they're terrified of his 35% slave supporters, not understanding that 60% of population hates his guts. He will fire Mueller. That is a promise. But nothing will happen to him because the Republicans will make sure that nothing happens to him. As I've mentioned before all he needs is some kind of military involvement that can be used as an excuse for declaring the country under martial law and then it's all over. Go over all his speeches and his behind the scene actions over the last year and it's all there, every step of the way and the removal of the top Cabinet members that might have done something about it shows we're nearing the end of the process. Kelly will be the next to go and then Trump will begin the process of firing Mueller in earnest. Go ahead, laugh. We'll see if you're laughing in a few months.
3
Claiming you have a royal straight flush w/o showing the cards?
The Ed Board can't defend that position.
Studies can be logically evaluated only if all the data is available and sources can be verified.
Accepting secret claims, studies and reports brought us the past 15 years of war and counting, Viet Nam and witch trials.
The Board should retract this opinion.
4
You did not understand that the confidentiality in question refers to the fact that subjects of studies remain anonymous. This is crucial to ensure people will enroll in a study or answer as honestly as possible.
3
Lets face the truth when ever the GOP is in power its all about money. When have they ever done anything for the common good of the people. They have there base so messed up in the head it would seem they can not tell right from wrong, as for Scott what a pice of work and I'm Shure he sleeps just fine while we have to live with his nightmare.
Pruitt is not the only one with their head in the sand. So is the NY Times Editorial Board and most of their Columnists.
For years I have been stating, along with a few other commenters, that America is in a New Dark Age. People pick and choose the science they want to fit their world view.
People at the ground level do not get their kids vaccinated because they think it will give them autism yet they will run them to the panicle of the Scientific Method the hospital emergency room if they get hit by a car while playing on the street.
The problem is not Pruitt, it is the average American that all day long uses the fruits of The Scientific Method all the while talking down on science and those that spent the hard work to learn how to use to make others lives better.
When will the NY Times start bashing the root of the problem as opposed to the symptoms of it, namely Trump and his lieutenants?
And still yet almost nobody, especially not the liberal left, is ready to discuss nuclear energy—the only truly viable alternative that doesn’t depend on batteries or future efficiency gains to make sense today.
Name one nuclear power plant built strictly with private funds. Name one that is liable to the surrounding population for harm ensuing from an accident or negligence. Go ahead, I'll wait.
There is no such plant. It doesn't exist because after 70 years of research and development, nuclear power is still uneconomical, despite federal law shielding it from liability. Quite the track record, no?
Meanwhile, efficiency gains are readily available everywhere, with existing technology. Europeans use half the energy of Americans. Californians use half the electricity of the average American. The car industry doesn't deny that doubling fuel efficiency is possible with existing —existing! — technology.
Think it's expensive? No. Example: the American population today is twice what it was the the 1950s, yet we use the same amount of water. More efficient machines, toilets, and showers. Fewer leaks. No great expense, no inconvenience. Just paying attention, and doing what needs doing.
Wind and solar power are already competitive with gas and coal. They're actually far cheaper when ecological damage and government subsidies are factored in. Why not let the changeover happen? Why not, oh, I don't know, encourage it? If there are problems, I bet we can solve them. We've done it before.
3
At the root of this and all that is trumpland, is the GOP designed abject ignorance coupled with the oft-cited anti-intellectualism of the electorate. We are stuck in a Piaget pre-operational level: you can't see mercury etc in the air, but you can see the "Wall"...
1
Trump nominated him and the Republican led Congress approved him, what else do you need to know? At the very least, they should change the name of the department he oversees to the E.D.A., the Environmental Destruction Agency.
1
Used to be that Americans were proud of finding new ways to do things when obstacles presented themselves. Since the Nixon admin (who started the EPA!) republicans have turned to blind faith in ideas proven wrong by science. They have come to openly hate the very idea of changing their actions according to the facts.
This came to be around the same time republicans became so religious. Which came first??? but the two things have one thing in common, faith in things asserted without proof or that have been proven wrong.
Mr Pruitt is very obviously consciously doing criminal things, hence all the secrecy around him. Someone might like to remind him that as a public servant everything he does is meant to be open to public gaze.
1
As long as the people are fooled by the divergent messages of race, abortion, immigration, the "peasants" will acquiesce to the reign of big business interests.
I can only hope that Pruitt goes back to where he came from and leaves DC forever. Let the people who live in Oklahoma deal with him. They elevated him maybe they deserve him. At least, one would hope, they have awakened to the facts regarding this man styled in the manner of tRump. If they do vote him into office then they get what they wanted. If he fails at getting elected then let him get a job and work like the rest of us.
The "Culture War" in America is not about abortion or same-sex marriage. It's about the systematic destruction of evidence based thinking on any topic or discussion.
The highest purpose is the accumulation of wealth at any price and prizing self-aggrandisement as the benchmark of veracity.
We are witnessing this breakdown because of power and wealth. Income inequality is an apt academic description of wealth distribution, but it does not convey the the effect of highly concentrated power; power enough to corrupt understanding into meaningless babbel that serves the interests of maintaining power.
George Orwell's prophecies are here. Newspeak is the coin of the realm.
Privatize profit and socialize pollution on steroids. This is the new EPA. Thanks Trump voters.
2
How odd. You'd think most Americans want and need clean water, air, and safe products (food, cars, toys). It's science that determines what's dangerous and what is not. Oh well. "Can I have another double Jack on ice please."
Climate change deniers in political office are simply offering their votes to the highest bidders! For the most part, they have neither the scientific training or vocabulary to qualify them to speak authoritatively on this topic. Unless of course, you consider their unerring faith in their pastors who know for a fact that climate change is bogus because God told them so...
The sentence, "He told his subordinates that they could no longer make policy on the basis of studies that included data from participants who were guaranteed confidentiality," is puzzling. If anyone uses data from confidential sources it is impossible to judge either the quality of the data, or the credentials of the source. The "confidential data" could be from a lobbying group, a political action group, a friend of a friend, or for that matter a well financed PAC. This isn't good science, it is a mechanism to mask data sources and influence peddling.
1
My most frightening thought on Nov 9 2016: we may be able to undo much of Trump's damage to the U.S. in the years ahead, but it may be too late to undo the harm to the environment.
2
No studies, no data, no rules - but an unlimited, first class budget to pamper the boss.
2
The Robber Barons have completed their coup.
The current administration of Oligarchs is only interested in making themselves and their friends richer.
This may be the end of the American experiment.
4
After learning that coffee causes cancer (although only in California), I'm pretty skeptical about how some segments of our citizens view science for good or bad.
The types of studies that are in dispute here run for years. Whether the EPA disregards them for the duration of this administration will very likely have little or no impact on policy over the longer term.
1
@kwb
California maintains a policy that citizens should be provided with the scientific facts and can decide for themselves what to do about it. Data suggests a weak but measurable link between roasted coffee beans and cancer, so California makes sure people know about it. The people then make their own decisions about how to handle it.
By contrast, while scientific data strongly suggests causal links between the burning of fossil fuels and a litany of harms to individual health and the macro climate, the GOP-led federal government would hide this from you and me to the benefit of for-profit corporations, all of whom preferentially donate to the GOP in response.
Tell me which philosophy you prefer.
3
The EPA doctrine of “clear gaps remain including our understanding of the role of human activity” underwrites a policy of denial. The evangelical and conservative perspective that the earth and all of its resources are given by God to serve man is at the root of this agenda. The problem is that it is not only whales and wolves and their ilk that suffer as we soil our nest. We and our children and future generations are victims as well.
3
All scientific research should be public and open to review. Can you please explain who the scientists are who required confidentiality in reporting their results? Without more details, that might made me question data.
Scientific studies often involve people's personal lives and medical history which are legally required to be held confidential. Releasing this raw data would not only be illegal, it would constitute a breach of trust.
2
Read more carefully. It’s not the scientists/ researchers who require confidentiality, it’s the subjects who make up the data points.
3
Science and technology advancement enables and maintains the modern American economy and foreign policy dominance. Aggressive STEM education is the basic maintenance requirement along with objectivity. This is not remotely arguable it seems to me.
Political science and economics can be included in the equation but only as role players in the context of myriad options.
So what do the cloistered economic elite believe in this regard? Most typically do not engage openly so who speaks for them? Trump? Limbaugh? GOP? Nobody by design?
Political power has now forced them out of their closets in many cases. It certainly looks like we were much better off before this happened. The global financial system apparently has provided the indipensable tools for transforming them into ex-patriots.
Treading water means we are just slowly drowning as a nation.
The Right believes in Capitalism, business success, and land development. In these areas, environmental protection law often thwarts monied interests. You hear it from politicians and developers, but also from contractors and equipment operators. Environmental protection makes projects more expensive, slows project timelines, and reduces affordability. I say it’s worth it, but that’s a value judgement that is based on my belief that we are obligated to utilize resources in a balanced way. I have not heard nearly enough defense of this value from the Left. Why, for instance, IS it so important to realign a road to avoid a salamander and frog habitat, or ban logging in an Spotted Owl habitat, or preserve land for Sage Grouse habitat, and to cause the developers to spend resources to enhance these species’ survival? What has been said to refute our founding principle of Manifest Destiny?
I am not at all surprised that a land developer president would steer the country in this way. Let me emphasize: Trump is a developer. To focus on his reality show resume is a mistake. He is a developer. It’s always all about the bottom line.
3
When Volkswagen was caught cheating on emissions, I read that increased deaths due to respiratory related problems would be about 100 across the US.
I suspect the deaths projected to be the result of relaxed EPA rules could be similarly projected.
The hostile environment of the EPA precludes this kind of investigation. The science and statistical knowledge required to estimate lives saved relating to specific regulations are beyond Pruitt's comprehension when compared to the power of corporate greed--or the gluttonous desires of these corporations' board members.
Perhaps a plan to provide guidelines: no regulations necessary if less than one death is projected per million dollars saved.*
*Possible carcinogenic effects of regulated chemicals/processes are, by rule, ignored due to the purge of scientists at the EPA
1
The worst administration in history. It will take decades to repair the damage these people are doing.
24
May Scott Pruitt, President Trump's climate denial E.P.A. acolyte, walk the plank like so many other Trump people have done in past year. The ones who resigned from the sinking ship or were keel-hauled by our ignorant commander-in-cheat, are the lucky people to have gotten out while the getting was good! May Ryan
Zinke be given his walking papers (by Tweet) soon, too.
6
Corporate interests are exploiting the anti-intellectual streak of American culture to turn public opinion away from facts that threaten their bottom line.
16
So let me get this straight. Scott Pruitt would rather expand the coffers of fossil fuel companies to the tune of say $X billion while the country experiences the consequences of global warming to the tune of $100X billion plus untold misery and loss of life. Yes, that is evil.
17
Thanks for pointing out that the real scandal here is not the expense of taxpayer money on family vacation or 24/7 security, but the effort to dismantle the EPA. Pruitt is not even trying to hide it. For him and his grim reaper minions, the environment is nothing else than a disposable source of economic enrichment. These nihilists should be removed from their jobs before it is too late.
12
Trump is delivering on his campaign promises. He doesn't care whether the result is a more dangerous, unhealthy world. He cares only about getting reelected. His policies are pleasing business and the 1%. These are the only people Trump is catering to -- and often giving them even more than they ask.
5
Why pick on Pruitt--Trump's entire administration and ideology is built upon anti-intellectualism---no studies, no data, no rules. His base is fed up with facts---the only knowledge they value are opinions--of their neighbors, fellow workers, and individuals they sit next to at a bar---nothing fake about these people.
8
In spite of Pruitt and Zinke’s unethical and downright destructive behavior and leadership of their agencies, I don’t expect them to leave office anytime soon as long as they are pleasing their clueless boss. The damage they cause will be the most difficult to repair and stop. Our only hope is for one or both houses of Congress to flip and to have them and their staffs testifying every single day and having to explain, defend, and justify every single action in public.
10
The "studies" produced at the EPA have been biased, the so called cost benefits of draconian regulations are pure fiction. Over the years the employees have been indoctrinated, it has attracted political partisan "progressives".
Pruitt is just doing what needs to be done to de-politize the EPA and let it get on with the job of protecting the environment in a sustainable and common sense way.
3
You know this how? I see a lot of opinion, and not a single supporting fact.
Facts have a liberal bias. Sorry, that's how it works. Nonfacts tend to support the privateers and special interests. Accept them at your peril.
4
Jaco, let’s see your evidence. Name just one EPA study that was biased and explain where the bias is. Otherwise, you are just making unsubstantiated claims based on your own bias. Likewise your claim regarding the political leanings of EPA’s researchers. How many of them do you personally know?
4
Unless the fact meets a conservatives preconceived belief it does not merit consideration. The preconceived belief will almost always take precedence. Or to put it more bluntly they would not know the truth if it slapped them across the face. Former Republican Born Again Democrat.
8
Donald Trump doesn't have to worry about not sticking his head into the sand as long as he has Scott Pruitt to carry out his agenda -- which is basically undermine every environmental protective measure put into place bt the previous administration ... especially if a potential profit margin involved.
One doesn't hav to be a rocket scientist to figure that out, which is why this suits the president who happens not to be one either.
3
Republicans are now literally responsible for crimes against the environment.
How different is that than crimes against humanity? Not very much if you think about it.
Many must be feeling recriminations about this. They need to speak up now.
Silence is complicity. Remember the post the WW2 trials?
12
Mr Pruitt is just the logical choice for trump and the GOP they have long held the belief that government doesn’t work and with every pick the current occupant of the Oval Office makes, the public can see that indeed it has ceased to function. And now most of the country is well aware that the GOP’s view of the country is of one giant sucker to fleece by privatizing agencies and rewarding their mega donors with huge tax breaks.
4
Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke, Donald Trump are so far off the norm that any reasonable assessment of their actions should include some speculation as to their motivation for gutting and/or hobbling the EPA and the Department of the Interior.
It appears to me that their actions can be attributed to simple, blind hatred. Hatred of the people concerned about the environment. Hatred of anyone who does not share their destructive, disruptive vision for our country, and hatred for anyone who doesn’t sufficiently look like, talk like, or think like them.
Richard Nixon said, “Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don't win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.”
I disagree with Mr. Nixon, whom I voted for once. I believe it is ok to hate these men and I will continue to hate them, and work against them, until they are no longer in any elected office and, hopefully, successfully prosecuted for their actions while in office.
10
As long as we're talking about the value of respecting scientific findings, could we please drop the "ostrich-like" head-in-the-sand metaphor? Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand when they are frightened.
4
Hostility to science and attempts to muzzle it are behaviors we have seen in Asian police states that cannibalized their societies. It is not behavior that is expected in Western democracies.
It is never harmless and "just politics" when science is suppressed.
5
I have nothing but contempt for people that participate in willful ignorance of science and knowledge and for sure that is rampant in the current administration. All I can say is "vote them out" ASAP! Not only that, send most the GOP home from congress with Democratic replacements.
That said, If this democracy means anything still, we can possibly turn this around, but it is not going to be overnight in a nation with so many that bask in their willful ignorance.
5
This is the real crime of the Trump administration. By allowing Pruitt to ignore science and abandon the EPA's "protection" mandate, Trump and his Republican enablers are not only endangering our health but also our national security. If Trump so admires his generals, he should let the Pentagon have a say in this critical policy arena.
6
Suppose you own a small business - an auto body shop, dry cleaning shop or a metal plating operation. EPA comes along and tells you they have evidence that your emissions are killing people and threatens you with regulation that could potentially bankrupt you. You ask to see the data. You are told that academic researchers have concluded this and you can't see their data. You have no recourse.
Contrast this with criminal proceedings. The police or FBI gather forensic evidence and accuse you of a crime. The legal system gives you access to the evidence and you have the right to hire your own expert to analyze the evidence and defend yourself. You have the right to question your accusers.
I don't like Trump's environmental policies, but I believe the public should absolutely have access to the data that underlies these important policies.
31
The data are available in scientific peer-reviewed journals. These are publications that people like my father, who was an auto mechanic his whole life and died of 2 primary cancers, would never read.
42
You are mistaken. Only the results of the researchers analysis are available. The underlying raw data are not available and cannot be independently analyzed by the public. In other words, you can read the conclusions of the researchers in peer reviewed journals, but you cannot have access to their data.
1
You make very good points. The problem is the generally v low education level, particularly in the hard sciences of the u.s. public. By some estimates the average American can barely make change and and apparently more people believe in guardian angles than evolution. Good luck getting thru to these people on complex technical issues.
31
The wolves have been made the shepherds, and we are the sheep. They've been given license to run amok, and the slaughter has commenced.
Science has never been an issue for them. They know they poison people and the environment, and that's fine with them. Private profit, public consequences.
They must be stopped.
No offense meant to real Wolves.
6
Between the Kochs and the Russians, I have yet to determine which is worse for our democracy.
11
Even more alarmingly, this same reality-denial extends to military matters. For example, Bolton seems to think that a decisive--yes, I'm going to say it--"shock-and-awe" attack on North Korea would settle the difficult situation once and for all. As in many other cases, where evidence and history show the folly of the administrations policies (no more swimming in the harbor!), it will not end well.
3
Many of the problems that now beset working class whites were for decades confined only to minority communities and hence warranted no interest in the powers that be. There is one well documented side effect of being poor and voiceless and that is environmental racism, becoming a dumping ground for pollution. With so many moribund white communities, who voted for Trump BTW, unable to prevent the onslaught, they too will become mini-Chernobyl's because of middling financial incentives. There are already areas in WV and KY that cannot drink their groundwater because of coal mining runoff. In them, you see the future.
6
Stop complaining about Pruitt and just vote like it matters in November. When the primaries are over get over it and vote. Don’t take the divisive bait that we know is coming and just vote. We collectively voted this government in either actively or passively by not voting or by “protest” voting.
5
Move out of the country.
That's the only solution left to us
as the US has lost any semblance of a functioning democracy.
4
There are so many "issues" going on at the same time with this clutch of robber barons posing as a presidential administration that Pruitt, like so many other cabinet level officials is getting away, almost unnoticed, with the takedown of 50 years of effort to preserve what's left of this terrestrial biome.
I take hope only in the fact the November, 2018 is just 19 months away and that with effort and commitment on the part of Americans everywhere we can shake a positively cynical congressional majority out of office.
Thank you NYT and all other publications who shed light on these corrupt thieves.
3
Pruitt, like Trump, will be a short-timer. We must limit the damage he does to our environment and planet while in office, and we must keep in mind that all damage we fail to prevent now is damage we will have to repair after this destructive Administration ends.
5
Hard to understand how these guys have no regard for their grandchildrens' futures.
3
Science simply means using critical thinking and logic and avoiding fallacious arguments. The human species has made great advances using science.
“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike----and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” Albert Einstein
But of course the Ttrump administration has no interest in logic; we know who they support and money is the problem.
Einstein also said this:
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
5
Post 2016 November is a good indicator of what occurs when the world imagined into existence by American center and left vanishes, and the real America emerges.
The imagined America of the left: a judgment free, anti-elite zone, where the lunatics are thought as a fringe (when they are mainstream republicans), the church is seen as benign (when the American ayatollahs want to foster an American Talibanic theocracy), AM radio is seen as entertainment (when it peddles hate, prejudice, rumor, conspiracy, and scares the bottom half of America witless).
Trump did not start the war on data, evidence, science. That has been going on since Bush the junior, and Reagan the King (ketchup is vegetable, trees pollute). We were pretty sanguine when we thought Banana Republics spoke Spanish, and third world was dark people. We are getting there.
Republicans are creating the world in which they can rule for ever (just like Putin, and Xi). Where armed guards, barbed wire, and zoning - keeps them safe and in power.
It is impressive how they are destroying regulations, environment, justice, education - and championing religion, internecine warfare, scapegoating, fear mongering. Trump is urging cops to beat up people.
Pruitt is the reflection of what happens when the democrats are run with the sensibilities of grade school English teachers who can imagine a lot as a result of their entitled, smug self-satisfaction, but do little more than feel sorry for themselves.
Kalidan
1
When the Democrats today cannot be distinguished from the moderate Republicans of the 1970's, there is not a righteous platform to run on. As superior as they may be to the alt-Right crazies, you cannot beat something with nothing.
1
Pruitt has obviously not been house trained. He fouls our home daily. If Oklahoma wants him back they're welcome to him, otherwise it's the pound.
7
Lucky for us that both Pruitt and Zinke chose to associate themselves with such a singularly despicable administration. It won’t help them. But the changes both men make will have an adverse effect on individual American lives that will last for generations. Their deliberate actions approach criminal behavior.
5
I wish people would stop associating anything currently going on in this country with trump. trump does not give a toot about policy or government or anything that does not specifically affect him and his bank account. And, of course, his sadly diminishing cadre of fawning groupies. trump is just the distraction/puppet in the White House being used by the Republican party to further their own agenda. They love it every time trump makes noise. This is the quintessential symbiotic relationship. trump gets to pillage the taxpayer bank account (plus his own re-election campaign bank account) and the repubs get to bend America to the will of the party and their wealthy donors. Sadly for them, it is the less than educated trump/Republican voter base that will get the shortest end of the stick when all is said and done. It is by design that trump keeps getting blamed for everything. Republicans don't want any hint of where the blame truly lies. If they keep their majorities this November this country is in deep trouble. I can't for the life of me understand why every single media outlet isn't asking every single night why not one dollar has been spent to guard against any tampering of our electoral system considering how important this coming mid-term election is. Makes me very, very suspicious.
3
I am glad that California is making a stand here. Pruitt is utterly corrupt and (literally) in the bed of a highly paid lobbyist. Unfortunately he is very effective in enacting the angry and uninformed impulses of our lier-in-chief.
I live in the beautiful state of Montana and can only hope that the environmental damage done by Pruitt and Zinke can be minimized until the next election when they can start their descent into the trashcan of history. Pruitt and Zinke are eager to destroy our national parks and forests and need to be stopped by all means possible -- for our and our children's sake.
5
Why would Trump and Pruitt want to let scientific evidence get in the way of "good" policy?
2
It no longer matters what any individual or entity thinks, or how it behaves. At 7.6 billion and increasing by 80 million (pop. of Germany) annually, the population explosion has (to borrow a term from nuclear reactors) gone prompt critical. Some one or mix of nature's breaking mechanisms will be triggered (actually have already started to kick in). There is nothing that can be done to avoid the looming disaster. Pruitt merely accelerates what is already in play.
1
My brother-in-law, a "good Democrat," drives and consumes at will. His rationale is that it is too late and we are all screwed. There are few things as abject as benevolent defeatism.
I don't believe the far right disputes the science. I think they know it is true, but for political and economic reason, they misrepresent the facts to hang on to a gullible voter base, who are told that regulations cost jobs.
Many regulations actually create jobs, but one would never know that listening to these creatures of the fossil fuel industry.
This is the same mentality imposed on an unwitting America by big tobacco. They knew their product was dangerous, but they hid the truth and confused the issues with constant "alternative facts."
The science is conclusive. They prefer making money to public health and safety.
3
And yet we the public through a silent and complicit Republican Congress enable the destruction of our environment. Years ago I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. It remains in our library, yellowed pages but powerful. We believed her, we as a country acted upon her wisdom. It helped lead to such landmark rulings as the Clean Water Act, of which my own husband argued in behalf, and the Clean Air Act. Then, the irreplaceable EPA.
Scott Pruitt is a disgrace of a man, and this President knows full well what is being done. Pruitt is the mouthpiece of an individual who has no sense of what is good for America re health and safety. Everything and everyone must bow down to the warped will and profound narcissism of Donald Trump. But I ask them both: Do you men not realize that you, too, and your families will fall victim to a polluted and contaminated environment just as we will? Just wait...
161
Mr. Pruitt is correct about data transparency. It may be appropriate to make compromises for a few cases in which some of the data is truly confidential, but transparency is essential, and making raw data available is the way to achieve it.
I have a great deal of respect for science and how it’s done, but bias, unintentional or sometimes not, is common. This is certainly true in the case of climate science. For example, much data on the climate is based on assessments of what the worldwide climate was decades or centuries ago. The fact is we didn’t have accurate thermometers, satellites, or accurate records until the 1960’s. So, we rely on surrogate data – things like tree rings, sedimentary deposits, and the like. These methods work – more or less. But there’s judgment involved, and it’s reasonable to insist that the raw data be accessible to as many scientists as possible.
Much climate science is based on computer modeling, this is the basis of our conclusions that humans are responsible for global warming. Without full public access to the models and the assumptions that are applied, we cannot judge the results.
Climate science is highly politicized, and judgments contrary to accepted dogma are invariably criticized or even ridiculed. A solution is transparency in the science and access to raw data. We may need to compromise, pay to redact subjects’ identities, or limit access to controlled settings. But in general requiring public access to raw data is appropriate.
2
This administration is giddy about repealing regulations allowing industries to shrug their environmental, safety and health responsibilities.
Meanwhile, The Innovator of three Infrastructure Weeks (yielding zero with no creativity) fatly ambles past opportunities to rocket solar, wind and technology forward to allow us to employ more in better jobs, and to be a leader on these fronts.
3
I think most people already know the problems outlined here. The readers would be far better served if the authors attempted to outline what is being done about it...perhaps using input from organizations such as NRDC etc. Information about areas where our voices can help would be more productive than endless handwringing.
10
The EPA isn't always correct; the government, makes mistakes - often huge ones E.g. : The toxic gasoline additive that the EPA approved to replace lead in gasoline [MTBE]? which contaminated many water supplies. The gov't hyped DDY as a best practice via Ag Districts aross the US). Military bases are almost always "brown fields"
Reliance on science helped to make EPA programs and regs make sense, and protect the environment - not some amorphous abstraction, but the sum of what we breathe, eat and drink, and move through daily.
The current administration prefers a know-nothing approach to everything. Thinking is not fun. The members - current/past - have on the whole been likely to profit from lifting or refusing to enforce regs. That is what this is about: maximizing profits for a few, no matter what the consequences for the community at large. The cost of remediation and recycling should be included in product costs - but the Pruitts all industries to do what they want - to compete with international polluters, to lower the quality of life here.
In the end it is the community which pays for pollution and squandering resources. GE may have been ordered to cleanup PCBS in the Hudson, but most toxic sites were abandoned by manufacturers long gone.
Identifying past mistakes should lead to better decisions. Pruitt wants to bury everything. To suppress research because of personal ambition - and ignorance - is the ultimate in cowardice and a form of treason.
9
The problem is compounded by our president's arrogant know it all attitude made all the more repellent when he knows so very little.
Pruitt shares the Trumpian penchant for ignorance and an undying love for the twentieth century and even the nineteenth. Of course, the conservative war on science is hardly news, because it's not a problem to promote the business of scientific innovation for profit while disdaining actual science. Endless conservative hypocrisy.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
5
I don't know where to begin with Trump and Pruitt, they are like religious zealots, that have to condem science because it disproves their doctrine. I sometimes think we are not that far removed from the days of Galileo and the Pope. Starting with Reagan Republicans/Conservatism has had much more in common with a religion than a political party. No matter how many times their doctrine is proven wrong and fails they just keep coming back.
Trump is the perfect leader for the party of we don't need no education, a man who never reads and has an addiction to television watching. Pretty much just like his base.
Funny or rather sad thing as a resident of South Florida and a cyclist that rides past Mar Largo on most weekends, it will certainly be under water in fifty years. I guess the only positive to that is at least I can see where my tax dollars are being spent.
15
I don’t understand. Motivations aside, I see nothing wrong with requiring that regulations be based on publicly available data. Health data can be de-identified and used for research. This is routine. Of what value to public research is individualized, personal health care information? To write sound regulations, researchers use disclosable aggregate data based on non-disclosable personal data. I’m sure it’s just me, but it seems that something is missing here. If Pruitt is saying no research based on confidential data - a different thing altogether - then OK, that’s an outrage.
3
It does say, in the first paragraph, that Pruit says no studies based on confidential data. So I don't understand your point?
1
Every day, I am more grateful than the day before to live in California. The adults are in control here.
24
I feel the same way about living here in New York.
1
There are a lot of things wrong with California but its position on the environment, clean air and toxic wastes are not among them.
George Orwell said, "Who controls the present controls the past." To the power-hungry Scott Pruitt and his pals in the Trump Administration, revising the wording about something like the science of climate change is a radically effective way to remake the present in their own image, which is of a vast arena where fossil fuel industrial magnates can drill, baby, drill.
14
We are left to act on our own.
Fight deforestation where ever you can.
Palm and timber plantations are devastating Austral-Asian ( Malaysia, Indonesia etc) tropical forests. Functioning forests can pull huge amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and provide myriad co-benefits.
Buy an electric car.
Plant or save trees where possible.
24
Better yet - forego the car. Learn how to walk again, and demand essential services within walking distance.
You buy an electric car.
It's easy, and not inappropriate, to lay blame at the feet of certain people like Trump and Pruitt. But are they just opportunists taking advantage of our increasingly limited span of attention? Solving environmental problems requires an understanding of cause-and-effect somewhat more sophisticated than "I turn on my twitter feed and this is what I see." My greatest concern is that we as a society are losing our ability to tackle environmental issues.
26
Adan, think bigger. MY greatest concern is that we as a society are losing our ability to tackle ANY hard problem.
2
Talking points are key for the upcoming midterms. I hope Mr. Pruitt's name comes up early and often. And candidates would do better to not so much draw the line to Trump as directly to the Party in power. The GOP.
23
I feel that "We, the people," are in the throes of dark period in our nation's history and it all started with the (s)election of Donald J. Trump as it's leader. What a huge mistake.
There is so much about his presidency that is disturbing on so many different levels...and his dismissal of our environment as an issue of concern is at the top of the list -- the "top" because we depend on a healthy environment in order to sustain life as "we know it".
With Trump's appointment of Pruitt to head up the EPA, we were given a clear signal that Trump could care less about the environment. After all, it was Pruitt who sued the EPA eleven times prior to his appointment. Trump and Pruitt want to turn the clock back on all of the progress we've made on environmental issues since Nixon's establishment of the EPA in the early 70's. Those of you who were born in the 90's don't know how polluted our environment had become. We literally had rivers on fire, dangerous levels of smog in all of our major cities, and autos power plants that continued to spew poison into the air that we breathe.
I am so looking forward to our next election cycle so that "We, the people" can take action to restore sanity and decency into our body politic. God help us.
51
@Mike
I agree with you on all counts. But at the same time time, the thing that must be remembered is that We, the People, didn't overwhelmingly vote for Donald Trump since he didn't get the majority of votes.
That's why We, the People should also seriously consider abolishing the outdated Electoral College.
1
Under Pruitt, the EPA is becoming a cost effective organization. So-called "studies" take time and consume resources. Gathering data is questionable, especially when the data is used to promote political agendas embraced by elites. Not everyone is an elite. So-called rules are OK in so far as they do not impede free enterprise and deliberately destroy industries viewed as environmentally incorrect by the elites. Elites prefer work that does not involve physical labor. Environmental science is acceptable when it is done independent of politics, not to promote a countervailing radical political economy which unethically, unjustly, and unfairly destroys the jobs of hardworking Americans. Thank you.
8
You say that science needs to be indepentent of politics, but you make no mention of it needing to be independent of industry. The fact that you trust corporations more than government is more than a little scary.
The money for scientific research has to come from somewhere. Because there are government grants involved does not affect the outcome, studies have demonstrated that time and again, additionally all of those studies are peer-reviewed. Time and again, though, we see cases of corporation funding research to help their bottom line at the expense of the environment, their customers, and their employees.
Thank you.
43
Studies take time and consume resources because science is a slow process by nature. Establishing the link between smoking and cancer took time, so did establishing the link between greenhouse gasses and global warming, and so did a lot of science that you take for granted in your life now (electronics, phones, satellites). I won't buy the argument that those things weren't worth doing because they weren't "cost effective" at the time we were doing them. Also, wanting clean air, clean drinking water, not wanting to dump waste into rivers and waterways is a political agenda that I imagine is embraced by conservatives and elites.
Mr. Pruitt can view the scientific policies his department puts forward and overrule them in favor of more business interests. In this case, he would have access to the data, and would make decisions in a balanced way. That's not what he's doing. He's setting America back by silencing and gutting the science that is part of the EPA's mission.
41
"If you think only "elites, whatever that means to you, care about clean air and water, you must believe only they care about their children, grandchildren, friends - others. Are families "elites"? Those who live by the Golden Rule?
You focus on cost-benefit analyses and assert that science that takes "time" at the expense of industry is "elite." So elites are everyone who care about more than immediate satisfaction?
Please, think of others, too. There's no future if we don't.
27
Will the new rules on acceptability of scientific data be applied to the “secret science” used by industry in support of their toxic chemicals and pesticides? The clamor for transparency cannot be taken seriously as long as industry hides behind the curtain of “confidential business information”!to hide the data necessary for independent evaluation of their studies.
21
I've never voted for a candidate on a singular issue. I voted for Trump and while a New Jersey vote for a Republican candidate doesn't matter I will not vote for Trump if he runs again because of his absolute failure to take a leadership role in renewable energy. One day, if the human race is still around, our grandchildren will read about the people who denied climate change in the same paragraph as those who insisted the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth.
43
You voted for Trump and are now disappointed in his "absolute failure to take a leadership role in renewable energy".
I wonder what in his campaign led you to believe he would assume such a leadership role.
3
Charlie, I've just got to ask: what is it about Trump's "absolute failure to take a leadership role in renewable energy" was unforeseeable to you? Trump has only ever expressed outright disdain for energy sources other than petroleum and coal.
1
Years from now our distant descendants will look back on this period with wonder at how global warming became such an issue among intelligent people. They will look around and see life going on as usual with weather events happening but with quite stable temperatures possibly a little warmer but also possibly a little cooler. Today's frenzy among the true believers reminds one of the 15th century tulip craze in Holland.
The environment is still safe after EPA rollbacks.
Fracked natural gas will replace coal, certainly in the US and hopefully in China and India, forestalling global warming for decades and ensuring clean air.
Electric cars will replace gas because they are easier to build and way cheaper to operate. It costs $6 billion per 1 mpg in CAFE standards so the ~10+ MPG target of 2025 would have added $60+ Billion (per year) to achieve ($3,800/car) - this frees money for development of electric cars.
The odious Waters of the US means irregular flows during rainstorms from hills won't be regulated as streams and adjacent areas.
We deplorables in Red Zones care about a clean environment as anyone else, maybe more as clean air and land is critical for our businesses - we're applauding the rollbacks.
4
CAFE standards are computed for the fuel efficiency of an auto manufacturer's entire fleet, including its electric and hybrid cars.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy)
By retaining current CAFE standards, a strong incentive for car manufacturers to build more efficient, but also more expensive electric autos is removed.
Additionally, the Trump administration proposed eliminating the $7500 tax credit for hybrids and electric vehicles. Regarding renewable energy in general, Pruitt himself stated last October, “I would do away with these incentives that we give to wind and solar. I’d let them stand on their own and compete against coal and natural gas.”
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/climate/tax-overhaul-energy-wind-sola...
Meanwhile, other nations like China are pouring billions into developing and perfecting these new types of vehicles. You're right when you say that "Electric cars will replace gas..." but your grandkids will be driving Chinese electric cars, thanks to ideologues like Scott Pruitt.
23
Burning natural gas still adds carbon to the atmosphere. Climate change won’t be forestalled because it is already happening. Even though I disagree, I’d be more inclined to respect the philosophy of letting the market decide how and when cleaner environmental technologies come into prominence if this administration was not also wasting government money trying to artificially prop up outdated, inefficient industries like coal and fighting with states who want to control their own emissions standards. This is not a free market approach - this is centralized government tipping the scales for a preferred economic class against the wishes of a majority of voters.
8
Save the Farms- Suggestion-- Ditch "deplorables" tag. It is sounding more like whining than a legitimate addition to an argument every day.
I don't think the environment will be safe until Pruitt and Zinke are removed from office.
5
Pruitt's goal appears to be one that aligns perfectly with the GOP leadership in Congress and the president. If you don't don't see a problem, then there is no need to do anything about the problem. That makes about as much sense as standing in the middle of the freeway facing the opposite of oncoming traffic.
20
It is vitally important that most of the Government Departments, Agencies, Bureaus, Secretariats, et.al. that have come into being since the mid-sixties be destroyed at the national government level.
All of this bureaucracy must be given over to the state level. All 50 states have, within themselves, replications of all the Federal Departments. All states even have an Air National Guard.
The original basis of thought in the Colonies was that in the event of state problems other nearby states would come to the aid of the troubled state. There was no need and no emphasis upon a central National, Federal Government. In trying to establish "independence," the misguided "founders" took America down the wrong path, the wrong road, the wrong lane of dependence upon a central government. This has been the bane of the United States (and not a balm) for over 240 years of its existence. Ronald Reagan was correct, "Government is NOT the solution; Government is the problem."
The Federal Government, operating out of the swamps of the Potomac, has no connection with the environmental problems that exist anywhere else in this land mass. From California to the New York islands, each state is best left on its own to function with its own statewide EPA and any and all protective agencies that it sees fit to its existence as a functioning state.
We are already seeing instances in which individual states and regions are seriously considering leaving the established Union.
5
It's almost like there are no historical reasons why the federal government has stepped in and has overseen state activities. I guess there were no pollution problems when the EPA was created (by a Republican president). I suppose there were no civil rights issues when the Civil Rights Act was passed. Oh, everything was going smoothly until the federal government got bored and decided to meddle in states' business, right? And why not leave all environmental regulations to individual states? Everyone knows that the effects of pollution and climate change are different once they cross state lines, right?
17
Wow. So the states will provide for the defense of the nation as a whole? The states will develop a transcontinental road system? A postal system which will function efficiently from Connecticut to California? Consistent regulation of pharmaceuticals? The states will negotiate with other sovereign nations? Will they maintain the electrical grid for the nation or just for themselves? Each state having its own EPA is absurd in so far as air and water move across state boundaries. There would be endless law suits. Could states place tariffs on other states exports? What would the response be to an epidemic?
As long as you are acknowledging the folly "misguided 'founders' I trust you'd be willing to revisit the 2nd amendment. Just sayin'
55
Except for one small reality. Pollution and environmental degradation do not respect state boundaries. You hope that the states will help one another. But when upstate lax pollution regulations damage downstate assets, what is downstate’s available option? A lawsuit?
Pollution is like interstate commerce. It affects all state without regard to borders. It is precisely what federal government should do: act to preserve the union of the several states and work on behalf of the common good.
30
Trump is reshaping the cabinet in his own image. People loyal to him, that think like him and won't challenge his authority/wisdom in ruling the US in the same fashion as he managed his real estate buiness.
15
as a Physicist , I have reviewed much of the data regarding climate change from both sides of the debate. The shocking fact is that every single prediction by the "warmers" has been wrong, as the CO2/ temperature correlation argument collapsed 15 years ago. Well actually it collapsed years ago when the plots of temperatures verses CO2 show clearly that CO2 rises after temperatures rise. The excuses for inaccuracies and failures to predict any climate change accurately are voluminous, but all guesses. Climate change has been occurring throughout the history of the earth, with or without humans. It is unclear at best what effect humans are having on the earth's climate, if any.
5
James: I am interested in your POV on two points in particular. First, that causality need not be established for the C02/temperature link to be worrying. In other words, even as temperature rise has indeed always preceded C02 increase in the past, that they have corresponded perfectly for hundreds of thousands of years. Second that the current spike in C02 from about 280 ppm before the industrial revolution to about 410 today is unprecedented in its rapidity in lieu of some tumult like a meteor strike. Even if some specific predictions about the effects of warming have been imperfect, has not the general prediction of increased temperature, melting glaciers and rising seas been correct? And in absent some other compelling explanation, aren't we left with human activity as the sole probably cause? I ask this in the spirit of open-mindedness; not tit-for-tat disagreement. I'm genuinely interested in your take. Thanks.
23
You may want to update your climate reading list. It appears now that the oceans have been up taking more CO2, and this is giving rise to massive coral bleaching and death of reef systems, with associated ecosystem collapses. It's grim reading about Australia's Great Barrier Reef, as well as various in the Caribbean.
20
All good points...I would say though that there is some new data regarding the polar ice melting in Antarctica. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/ross-ice-shelf-bore-antarcti.... Scientists were shocked to see sea water freezing when they expected melting. I am really not concerned about a CO2 rise as historically levels have exceeded 2,000 ppm and more. The assumption that the current or previous levels of CO2 were ideal is implied by some, however the plant life thrives at higher levels ( already being seen in the amazon region) and a 2 degree Centigrade increase in temps might really open up more farm land for cultivation. I'm not sure whether this is good or bad or even a non-event. I do know that factually, hurricanes and other violent weather has been decreasing over the last 20 years and the number of CAT5 hurricanes annually is actually less. The problem is that so many people anxious to support their view point, attribute every event to "global warming" whether it is wetter, drier, hotter, or colder which , of course, makes their analysis suspect. If you review the temperature charts for earth's history of cycles, the next cycle might be a new ice age which would be catastrophic for life.
Scott Pruitt, Trump and his supporters suffer from Cognitive Dissonance. This is described by professional as the suppression, watering down or glossing over issues which produce conflict with psychological pain and causes one to engage in the unconscious alteration in the estimate of probabilities to results of their preconceived goal. In Pruitt's case, as well as Trumps, their ultimate goal is money, but Trump has added a political element to the equation. He'd like to undo liberal democratic policies that are based on science and actual data since they are in his mind a threat to his presidency and ultimate goal of an authoritarian government. This is demonstrated in his gutting of the State Department, the EPA under Pruitt, the Tax Reform which benefits corporate America and the reduction and defunding of social services across the board. Add in his attacks on the judiciary, the intelligence community and the press and we have tyranny. Fox News pumps under informed voters with nonsense and for some reason they believe it. Who removes scientists from a science based agency tasked with the protection of the environment? Who removes regulations from the financial community that caused a recession? Someone that clearly doesn't have the best interests of the nation in mind. Trump supporters will never get it as they don't do fact checking which is why they continue to vote Republican and against their own best interests, but Putin is happy with a divided America.
28
I agree with all you say and only quibble this: cognitive dissonance is the LEAST of their problems.
Actually trump and his gang are traitors causing disruption of our institutions at the behest of putin, to make russia great again.
In Mr Pruitt's world, there is only money and the power that it brings to his handlers. There is no room for clean air or clean water. There is no room for the public good. Only money, and any obstacle to maximizing the return on their investment must be removed. Wars have been started for oil, governments overthrown, and now Mr Pruitt and his ilk wage a war on the knowledge that the fossil fuel industry has been and is poisoning us.
Maybe this attack on knowledge represents the last gasp, the start of the final act for a desperate fossil industry to maintain its hegemony over our world. We can hope.
21
Surely, this man has committed some kind of act that warrants his immediate removal by the Congress!
11
Fritz, surely you've noticed that the greediest, slimiest GOP in American history currently holds the majority in both houses of Congress. They will do NOTHING to so much as irk the deplorable base they share with Donald Trump, and Scott Pruitt is likely to be very popular among them if he does in fact choose to run for president as has been rumored.
If Trump's love affair with Putin, his vulgarity, his lies, his violation of the emoluments clause, his nepotism, and his general unfitness for the most important job in the world doesn't move Congress one inch, I doubt that Pruitt's malfeasance will have any impact on a Congress complicit in so many other wrongs and possible crimes.
The damage President Trump is doing to our norms, alliances, and civil society can be fixed if we have the will to overcome them. The damage Scott Pruitt is doing to the environment may well be permanent. He is willfully and gleefully destroying the only "home" we live in.
I don't know where he, the Koch brothers, the Mercers, etc. think they will go once the planet can no longer sustain life. Perhaps Pruitt doesn't care since he'll be dead and the next generations mean absolutely nothing to him. Although I cannot comprehend how a human can be so greedy and evil, I know I will be doing everything I can to make sure he and his boss are out of work as soon as possible. #Vote
40
Adrienne, You are correct: they don't care about what happens after they die. All they care about is money and power.
Scott Pruitt is one of the darlings of the 62,979,879 deplorables who voted for Trump. What he's doing is WHAT THEY ELECTED HIM TO DO.
He's bringing the Rapture closer! It truly is God's work.
Ignorance is bliss and money is everything when you firmly believe that the fate of the world "is in God's hands." This fixed, false delusion--the foundation of Christianity and its propagation into American politics--is what drives the self-righteous, belief-based modern Republican party, a sick mix between Trump, Pence, McConnell, and Ryan, and their angry, white base.
1
I live next to Oklahoma. They have an inferiority complex. They want to be a "player". I would concentrate less on Pruitt and more on who is lining his pockets, T. Boone Pickins who once said something akin to, "I pay billions in taxes, I want a say in how they are spent.". And regarding fracking and it's terrible effects to our soil and ground water, "Don't worry about it.". Trump likes people that are richer than he. He is now at their bidding.
12
If Oklahoma wants to be a player (and btw Scott Pruitt wants to be governor there if he can't be president of the United States), they need to decide to educate their kids. rewire.news/article/2018/03/30/state-public-education-oklahoma-dismal-heres-betsy-devos-made-worse/
Pruitt's rollback of environmental strictures on polluting American autos, is the death-knell for the industry. Consumers have long been accustomed to well made,fuel efficient environmentally friendly,vehicles, manufactured in Japan, Korea, Germany, etc... On the other hand, major industrial countries are going ahead with EVs, and plan to phase out gas/diesel motors within 10 to 20 years. The era of shoddy American gas-guzzlers is clearly over. Wonder how many thousands of resentful unemployed workers Pruitt's idiotic decision will add to Trump's "forgotten ones..."
20
Of course Scott Pruitt doesn't rely on science or the scientific method to administer the EPA.
For anyone unfamiliar with the "scientific method" - Since the 17th century, the scientific method is the accepted standard for investigating the natural world. It's how scientists correctly arrive at new knowledge, and update previous knowledge. It consists of systematic observation, measurement, experiment, and the formulation of questions or hypotheses.
Pruitt denies the observed and accelerating rate of climate change is due to human factors yet can point to no scientific analysis supporting his claim.
Sadly Pruitt, as with many of Trump's cabinet appointments, is dismantling government agencies while the GOP-led Congress fails to object. Now that silence and 2018 Democratic special wins in 2016 (formerly) pro-Trump regions, is making GOP leadership nervous about the 2018 mid-term elections. As they should be.
17
Pruitt is from Oklahoma. Most folks there could not define the E.P. A., or would want to do so. People in KANSAS make fun of Oklahoma. The perfect choice to ruin and dismantle the E.P. A.. Seriously.
11
I would be happy to have Pruitt run for governor. It would at least get him out of the EPA and Oklahoma would survive even if it meant competing for the "Worst State" ranking.
1
Follow the money! That isn't the only source of Pruitt's corrupt motivations, but it is the easiest to trace, and the best source of arguments against him.
12
America has become a backward thinking nation. Thank you California for forward, advance scientific thinking about the future of our planet and society.
23
California, with 40 million people, is leading the way to an unsustainable future no matter how many solar panels or priuses they put up or drive. No amount of technology or feel good regulations can over come the simple numbers.
I don't know what will befall Pruitt, Zinke, and everyone else on Team Trump when we are finally rid of them. But if there is such a thing as Karma, theirs will be big, brutal, and it will take place on a toxic plume.
21
The contortions and confusion illustrated here is profoundly ironic today. Indeed, a "ship of (intentional) fools" very sadly seems bent on turning every day into April Fools Day. The most practical cure: Registration, Education and Voting. Time to REV up!
18
When the toxic dust settles post Trump, I believe Scott Pruitt should be charged and tried in Federal Court for crimes against humanity, American and foreign humanity. Regulations can be reinstated but the ravages done to the human health may not always be reversed. The ravages done to our wildlife, landscapes, and natural treasures may never be reclaimed.
Mr. Pruitt poisons our lives with every hour he is in office. And Mr Trump put him there with Senate approval.
May justice be served and rendered. May they all be held accountable for all the damages, quid pro quo’s, and outright bribery that appear to be the norm in this corrupt and putrid Administration.
22
"...Participants who [are] guaranteed confidentiality" are simply people like you and me, who willingly sign permission forms at labs and hospitals that the remainder of our samples (blood, skin, etc.) can be used for scientific research, guaranteeing that our identity will not be revealed beyond such characteristics as "female, caucasian, etc.". This gives scientists access to a broader collection of data than might otherwise be available. This has nothing to do with people who want to hide their identity out of fear, greed, or deception--just that every Dick, Tom, & Harriet Scientist don't need to know my name or social security number.
14
This is all music to my ears. If "solving" climate change didn't involve massive new regulations, taxes, and governmental powers, we wouldn't be hearing anything about climate change. Furthermore, if we ever did halt climate change, the would be full-throated cries about the perils of "climate stagnation", along with plenty of new regulations and taxes to restore the planet to its pristine levels of variability.
1
No credible scientist would try to "restore the planet to its pristine levels of variability" because it can't be done. Humans have been mucking around with nature since the first bunch decided to stop being hunter-gatherers and started to stay in one place and sow seeds. Every dam, every felled tree, every road and building would have to be undone. No one wants to do that even if we could.
But we can and should work towards turning around the changes in the atmosphere that will eventually, if left unchecked, result in a planet that can no longer support life, which means a whole lot more will die then you or me. I don't know if you have children or grandchildren but that shouldn't matter. We are poisoning the planet to the extent that unless we stop, we're all going to die. Making money while killing the planet is a form of mental illness.
1
You’re engaging in multiple logical fallacies when making this argument.
I suppose if the converse of this is that when the planet becomes unlivable lots of folks will claim “God’s will,” because hey, science!
These days conscientious civil servants working for the EPA must feel as conflicted as a cop who discovers the job isn't at all as advertised, but entails robbing from and/or murdering fellow citizens. May these good people at the EPA hang in as long as possible meanwhile doing whatever they can to lessen the impact of Pruitt's insanely irresponsible, even catastrophic, tenure in office.
209
Very, very disappointed in America's lack of outrage.
6
The blame for this national disgrace is shared by the millions that voted for Trump. When they have to spend their ill-gotten tax refunds on air-filters and gas masks maybe then they will remember to blame themselves for an environment that they denied to themselves, their family and their fellow Americans and the rest of the world.
This editorial puts me at a loss.
16
In an administration packed with incompetents and sycophants who are perfectly ill-suited for the positions they occupy, Pruitt stands out. He may be remembered as the worst operative in what is already the worst administration in American history. (I never thought I would say that so soon after the departure of Bush and Cheney) Pruitt is the fossil fuel industry's little poodle. He does what they tell him to do. No doubt he is (or will be) generously compensated for his outrageous betrayal of the majority of Americans who want the environment protected, even the one who foolishly voted for Trump. Shame on them for being so clueless. All we can do now is watch in disbelief as this administration and little Mr. Pruitt wreak havoc on everything that is good and decent.
8
Trump is proud that he never reads anything. His promotion of ignorance reflects the mindlessness of those who elected him president. A world famous chemist has just left Harvard to work in Toronto because he cannot stand what America has become.
14
Money trumps humans. It's just like tobacco...except everyone dies..
1
I believe that Mr. Pruitt's claim that environmentalists are threatening him at airports and he needs to fly first class is fake news. Get to the back of the plane.
6
Perhaps Mr. Pruitt believes that anyone approaching him to express concern about his policies is a "threat". In fact, Mr. Pruitt is himself a threat.
Pruitt is nothing but a corrupt shill for the fossil fuel industry. His recent luxury junket to Morocco on behalf of the only LNG exporter in the U.S., while living in the house of the company's lobbyist is a criminal act. It was bribery, pure and simple.
Pruitt will not stop until we die of pollution. But no matter--The Koch brothers will have had a great return on their purchase of our government.
5
The appointment and enabling of Scott Pruitt is more offensive - and destructive - than a hundred tawdry sex scandals. Please, please American press - forget about Stormy and focus on climate change.
1
They can do both
I'm afraid I find this editorial hopelessly naïve. This "administration's" agenda has been abundantly and distressingly clear from the outset. Bannon himself in fact said it aloud - the "deconstruction of the administrative state". From stem to stern, top to bottom, every department is now pursuing not just deconstruction, but wanton destruction - of the environment, education, the justice department, voting rights, trade and foreign policies, and the very concept of truth itself. To dignify Pruitt's propaganda by pretending it is anything other than what it is is to continue the dangerous normalization of this illegitimate regime. There is but one reason the stock market is at all time highs - the dire costs of environmental and climate protections are being thoroughly externalized, with the polluting companies getting away with contaminating the planet for exclusive (and very much temporary) benefit of shareholders. There is one and only one solution to this despicable predicament - a massive voter turnout in November to inflict the people's will on this supine congress.
16
Where are all the frantic suburban mom antivaxers who vote GOP when it comes to clean air and water not to mention food additives? I am at a loss that any parent would be happy about the EPA removal of environmental regulations. What do they think it will do to their children's health? Given that guns are viewed as making children safer, is water pollution going to be the next myth?
15
It'll be much better for all of the Americans and the world if Scott Pruitt leaves Trump administration and his position as the administration of E.P.A. or the Environmental Protection Agency and goes back to his Oklahoma as a Governor which he desires or whatever he chooses to pursue rather than heading an agency which he wants to completely dismantle on the orders of his boss,Trump.
Actually we all on the left hope that our midterm elections come right now than on November 6th when the momentum is with our party's side with 40+ Republican lawmakers quitting the race for their reelections because they're scared to their bare bones thinking correctly that they'd lose it all because of their president's belligerence behavior.
With Stormy Daniels' story hogging the limelight and Mr. Mueller's impending charge of Trump for blatant 'obstruction of justice' which might come anytime between today's Easter Sunday and Labor Day, the G.O.P is in total disarray.
So it is not surprising that most of the Republicans in congress and in the state houses all over the country are just waiting for their party's doomsday which is coming at a faster rate than a Category 5 hurricane which doomed Puerto Rico and most other islands in the Caribbean last year.
Coming back to Mr. Pruitt who has a total "disdain for scientific inquiry" as you pointed out here, we might die much earlier than what that old man in a White robe up there wrote for all of us only because of Trump's nihilistic ideas.
7
Pruitt may very well end up as governor of Oklahoma, he can't be any worse for the people than the current occupant of that of the state. That assumes, of course, that his mendacity and corruption doesn't catch up with him first. The lavish spending, the paranoia, the disdain for the people of the country and the outright receipt of bribes (yes, a $50/night condo is a bribe) may end up sending him to another government paid location.
13
Understanding science requires critical thinking. Understanding Pruitt, trump or currently the majority of republicans requires the understanding of the fundamentals of personnal greed. Republican voters have accepted the dumbing down if America in exchange for money.
14
The Trump administration's attitude toward scientific inquiry cannot adequately described by a single word.
I suggest "Let's get these pesky scientists out of the room so that we can make real business decisions" for starters.
7
The only thing he has to sell is deregulation. Follow the money.
9
Actually on the side of the angels on this one, NYT - in two regards
1. Keeping information confidential - while acting upon it - essential to all of government, industry, and the press
2. Technology - the kind underlying cryptocurrencies - is making this more practically and efficiently possible
...
But - here's the rub
The FDA and USDA would grind to a halt without this sort of understanding - but imagine if their lead scientists went out and started shouting that beef is bad for you, and you should eat (much) less of it
That crossover from analysis to advocacy is a slippery slope - and don't even have to imagine this
Someone - someone actually more well-liked than the typical agency director - crossed this line
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/27/us/turf-was-cattlemen-s-but-jury-was-winfrey-s.html
While she won the battle - she also stopped warring
...
Your own Andrew Revkin highlighted this in a piece that can no longer be reached - as highlighted by your own Bret Stephens, who's been atoning ever since
*ttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/opinion/climate-of-complete-certainty.html
Here, Revkin points out that he pointed out that industry has been even looser with the facts
*ttps://qz.com/974048/andrew-revkin-bret-stephens-new-york-times-op-ed-misses-the-difference-between-uncertainty-and-skepticism-when-it-comes-to-climate-change-science/
The karmic equity - Stephens got to understand the settled science of global warming, up close and personal
2
There are now 1600 expected *annual* deaths from the clean diesel loophole that they reintroduced.(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/us/politics/epa-pollution-loophole-gl..., also The New Yorker. )
All the data we had from all the regulation rollbacks need to go to each and every American pastor, minister, bishop, and rabbi...and their congregants - every day, every decision. Because you can't claim to be pro-life and support breathing and drinking poison and causing weather disasters.
Not to mention guns, lack of health care, lies and on and on in the culture of death. And no, it's not for jobs...there are jobs in clean energy, too.
12
Pruitt displays willful ignorance. He has done this for years. He is an advocate for Merchants of Doubt. Some of his desire to ignore peer-reviewed science--in terms of clean environment and climate change--is a medieval throwback. Putting this all on the back of cutting regulation is a cynical ruse.
Science is not just a tool for justifying added regulation: it can defend older practices. It can overturn previously held theory or nonsensical assertions put in place to defend short-term profits. Science is predicated on change. Its purpose is not to give political cover to carbon-polluters to do whatever in the name commerce.
I hope the courts can stop Pruitt. Resistance is emerging. If not that we can hope his habits of feeding at the public trough will put him out of his current job (and not in some other cabinet office).
8
It's astounding his reaction to all "science" as contrived or solely positioning to liberal ends. Science is what keeps us all alive. It's fundamental to our technology, industry, health, and just about every aspect of our lives - material science, medical science, chemical science, engineering sciences, building sciences, computer science, name-it science.
What Pruitt represents is the worst of all things - selective use or disregard of science to fit a narrative of his own making. Combined with politically sanctioned power to drive that narrative into policy backed with massive spending.
His "decisions" result in choosing a select few winners at the expense of many orders of magnitude more losers.
14
Even though my 1988 divorce decree from the state of Oklahoma is 68 pages long, it doesn't exactly say that I am actually divorced. At least according to the German marriage authorities, who rightly mocked the sloppiness and inefficiency of the Oklahoman legal document. I went to get married in Frankfurt a few years ago and the Germans pointed out several insufficient statements in the Oklahoma divorce decree that violated their own marriage laws. The Germans asked me to write the Oklahoma government with a few questions of clarification that they needed to proceed with my marriage. I wrote to Mr. Scott Pruitt, the Attorney General of Oklahoma, explaining the situation and how he could help me fix it. Pruitt's staff wrote me back, explaining that they could not help me. To do so, would force them to "prove a negative, which [they] were not allowed to do." (Huh?) The international legal fault line between Germany and Oklahoma is still broken to my knowledge. We got married in New York City, which accepted Oklahoma's sloppy legal document. I think I know pretty much everything I know about Mr. Pruitt from this situation.
14
The effects of this administration will be felt for generations if we don’t stop them, and soon. Economic gain for today only, without regard for the long term consequences, is the hallmark of this administration. Trump and his ilk are literally destroying the world for their own benefit.
I think it’s the responsibility of every journalist who writes on economics to include the long term hazards of any current financial highs this administration may create. (I grew up in Los Angeles, and remember when you could “see” air: brown and thick, the San Fernando Valley was a basin filled with it.) Without long term concern for short term wins, we are destined for ruin.
12
Pruitt leading the EPA is the epitome of "the fox guarding the henhouse." The actions he has taken to weaken and delegitimize the organization comes at no surprise. Change is coming at the ballot box.
12
Lessons in how complex civilizations break down.
Fossil ways fossilized, burning it faster toward the end. How is it, for those of us who respect the rule of law, are overpowered in our defense of the earth by these outlaws and plunderers? That by some surreal quirk of fate these terrorists against reason run the world?
5
Since when did conservatism find itself at odds with stewardship of the environment? It seems to have happened somewhere around the same time all sense of nobility seems to have left the Republican party which moved from a position of defending individual liberties and the public interest to somewhere between a kleptocracy and a clown car. Ayn Rand is turning in her grave.
10
No, Ayn Rand is applauding. The only thing that matters is self-interest, and Pruitt and the rest of these crooks are full of it.
1
Try him and climate-change deniers in the Hague for what they should be accused of committing: Crimes against humanity. I am tired of half-measures. Pruitt should never be able to leave the US without fear of arrest and prosecution.
12
Unlike so many Trump appointees, Pruit knows what he is doing, and can cleverly dress his actions in impeccable prose. He beautifully skirts sticky subjects and phrases destructive acts in subtle guises.
His real motives are hidden, but entail social destruction. Why these choices? Certainly not from any lack of awareness of consequences. Only someone fully aware of what he’s doing could frame matters to make doing what is sensible seem to be impossible.
5
This article caused me to think what could happen at the NTSB, the National Weather Service, and the NOAA. We have already seen the Trump effect at the FBI. When the Trumpery affects our individual human condition we get agitated but under the cover of secrecy in Washington, DC, how can we know the truth?
The more this administration's sycophants mirror Trump's deficits in language, understanding, empathy, and even knowledge of government and its role in a civil society, the quicker their demise will be.
The tragedy is the damage being done in the interim.
7
Scott Pruitt makes a mockery of the original intent of the EPA, which is to protect our surroundings while regulating pollutants that threaten the air we breathe as well as the health of our country and planet. He is nothing more than a de facto lobbyist for fossil fuel companies. It's like having John Bolton in charge of the Peace Corp.
16
You describe Mr Pruitt's apparent ambition to be President as "astounding". It is hardly more so than that of the current occupier of the White House. Indeed, Mr Pruitt looks closer to a conventional politician than his boss does.
87
What should be "astounding" is the fact that anyone at all voted for our current President. It seems that self-imposed ignorance and greed will be what brings this formerly great country down.
13
Editorials reviewing the abuses by E.P.A. administrator, Scott Pruitt, and Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, are important. They remind us of the top-down dishonesty of the Trump administration in its stubborn denial of global warming and environmental pollution in order to increase profits of the extraction companies and to encourage our reliance on fossil fuels.
We desperately need, however, editorials and investigative reporting which provide a roadmap for fighting Donald Trump and his minions in the courts.
We need The New York Times and other respected news sources to outline the ways states and the American people can protect their natural assets and can combat the deterioration of air and water quality.
17
And where is Congress in all this? Aren't they supposed to be the guardrails on an administration, representing the will of the people? Crickets. Oh, that's right, the leadership of both houses are firmly in the pockets of extractive industries. It will be consumers that lead to change. NOT our elected officials. Just like other movements, consumers will apply pressure to companies to be more environmentally conscious and companies will need to comply or fail.
19
When I began traveling on business back in the early 70s, I could always tell when I was approaching certain destinations by the size of the brown dome of smoke, smog and pollution one could see from the windows of the plane. I remember descending into the yellow smog of LA that could be seen from a hundred miles away, or the choking smoke of Pittsburgh. And, I always knew when I was returning home to NY. It's particularly large dome of thick, brown pollution was visible from as far away as Baltimore. Over the years, thanks to the EPA and a string of responsible administrations who were not willing to sell our birthright and our children's future to business, I watched the air clear over our cities. I saw our waters turn blue again, and actually saw people fishing in my beloved Hudson River. Messrs Trump and Pruitt, with the complicity of the GOP leadership that has failed to reign them in, will reverse, in just four - and I hope not eight - years so much of the progress towards saving our planet and our lives. It will take a generation to undo what they have already done, and several generations to roll back what they are planning. As I await the birth of my first grandchildren, I am filled with dread for them, and for the world that awaits them.
81
Whether to enact an environmental regulation should be guided by a cost benefit analysis, not a touchy feely good guy bad guy view.
2
What is the value of bees pollinating? What is the value of the dead birds around glassy buildings? Isn't the value infinite, and moreso because their disappearance could cause our disappearance, our demise as a species? It has happened before, @michas. So tell me what is the value of right whales? Do we have any way of knowing? Or what is the value of the newly discovered jellyfish who can regenerate their cells? What is the value of all the species who are dying, unknown to us, because we must drive cars, pesticide the earth, drink out of single use plastic bottles? I dare you to put a price on nature.
22
Let’s see… Costs: installing green technology and increasing the cost of fossil fuels a few percent. Benefits: preventing increasing intensity of hurricanes, inundation of coastal residential real estate with sea-level, rise, melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, record floods, searing heat waves and droughts, bigger wildfires, loss of species, mass migration and resulting conflicts, … We better think hard about this for a while.
19
The EPA. itself, does cost benefit analyses of its regulations. Nothing is deemed priceless. A human life is valued at $9.1 million.
Great graphic, thank you. Like the joker, I personally t believe that these reactionary republican actually don't BELIEVE in science, but instead feel profit and exploitation of the earth are more important,somehow.
The Pruitt cone of silence and the mass resignations of republicans are the symbols of this year. They have accomplished their dastardly (to me) profiteering and know they cannot face the public anymore, but must put a put up their high collars and capes and disappear, like vampires at the fjirst ray of light.
15
The astounding fact about Pruitt’s war on the environment is that even Trump’s most fervent supporters desire clean air, water and cars/trucks.
I just made that up. There is no scientific proof that those who support this abysmal Administration care one whit about the environment.
That’s the issue come November. Let the voters decide.
21
Of course, corporate agriculture and big pharma like Monsanto are thrilled by Pruitt's leadership. Corporations stand to rake in billions on the removal of scientific studies of their practices. Buffer zones are gone. Restrictions on the application of herbicides, and types of chemicals that can be applied to crops, and when they can be applied, are all gone. Pruitt's Environmental Protection Agency is protecting only the growers and makers of agricultural chemicals. The agencies mission to protect consumers and our air and water are dead in the water. He doesn't need to be removed from office. He needs to be jailed.
38
To know that Pruitt had been associated with ALEC should tell us all we need to know about his attitude to government and particularly to regulation. ALEC is a creature of Charles Koch. Pruitt campaigned for AG of Okla with funding from the fossil fuel people. He expressed strong opposition to the EPA, to Obamacare, women's reproductive rights, and same-sex marriage. Key to the Koch-led campaign to "liberate" industrialists from government oversight was the need to conceal from the people what the campaign's aims actually were--the defunding of all that makes America a liberal democracy. A Koch associate was content to consider one outcome of such defunding--shantytowns all over America.
41
Des Johnson's comment speaks to what we need from the NY Times. Pruitt is ignoring science and rescinding rules. Thank you for reporting on this, but it is time to dig deeper. Why is he doing this? And why truly? Interview him. Dig. Please.
4
Funny about science and especially about global warming. I work in the insurance industry (as an underwriter) and read a daily news brief from an industry journal. Global warming and the rise of the oceans is accepted as genuine. In fact, it is a risk that our industry is very much worried about. It is a shame the politicians have been purchased by certain industrialists dedicated to avoiding the implications of science.
Also glad my house is 500 feet above sea level. Much of Florida, Louisiana and Texas are not.
52
Trump is the first president to refuse production of his tax returns since that convention was started 49 ago by President Nixon.
Trump is the first president to damage the EPA since it was established 48 years ago by President Nixon
Trump is the only President in the history of the United States to deny and defund science.
60
The argument here is elaborate. But the essential truth is simple. Pruitt’s hostility toward science is a ruse. His true purpose is to eliminate regulations.
30
there is, in fact, even more to it than that, because
Pruitt and his attitudes that cause such agita in the pages of the NYT are the common folk wisdom of nearly everyone in Oklahoma.
besides unbridled greed and general willful ignorance, the place is dominated by conviction of religious faith - FAITH, meaning that it is much more important, and in fact lofty, to live according to your belief in magic and superstition than according to any observable reality.
Faith is what you believe fervently but without evidence - and it is a powerful force in the lives of most Oklahomans. science, the search for provable truth and understandable, quantifiable causes, is the enemy of faith; it is sacreligious. seeking to undercut belief in what we're told amd instructed to believe, so there is a widespread anti-science bias at work as well.
as they incessantly repeat in the Sooner state countless times and in almost every social interaction, have a blessed day.
1
Is it “hostility to scientific inquiry” … or is it something far simpler?
There is a layering effect in regulation, and each layer seeks to add benefits to an existing store. Yet each layer also has its social costs, and they’re not trivial – it adds costs to conducting business, in the form of elevated barriers to entry for those who would risk their capital to seek economic success, and for those who seek to grow a mature business. Many believe that the costs are worth the benefits, and there are others who supported earlier layers of regulation but now pause at the costs of a layering that begins to resemble a pre-war Manhattan apartment with so many layers of paint on its walls that sharp corners long ago became oval rooms with palpably diminished available square footage.
If, like Pruitt, you believe that we’re over-regulated, what do you do? You peel back some of the most recent layers to re-incentivize start-ups and mature business growth. You begin by considering the totality of our environmental regulation, then begin peeling back – in most cases he’s NOT cutting over-deep into those deep laminations but carefully peeling back some of the most recent. The rest remains.
We see the same process in financial, consumer and other kinds of regulation – e.g., Congress’s efforts to adjust Dodd-Frank without fully denaturing it.
Scientific inquiry is of greatest use when what you want is justification for ADDITIONAL regulation. That’s not Trump’s – or Pruitt’s – agenda.
1
You can pursue additional regulation for defensible reasons until our economy is frozen solid, because there is little that commerce and industry does that has NO negative impact on the environment. And every step of that way along the regulatory road is eased by “scientific inquiry” – there always will be something ELSE, something MORE, to regulate if you just look for it, yet another costly layer.
Trump and Pruitt and others are about turbo-charging an economy, ideally in order to increase competition for skills and bodies to meet increasing demand for goods and services, which in turn organically increases real wages and perhaps even reduces income inequality. It’s a very REPUBLICAN way of addressing a need ALL Americans should recognize and accept. It should surprise nobody that undivided Republican government will seek to accomplish near-universally accepted ends in a Republican way.
And that means fewer layers of regulation, that had begun to appear endless before Trump.
1
Yes, it is a hostility to scientific inquiry, for the simple reasons you describe (at great length). Republicans put profit ahead of clean air, clean water and human health generally. So, like Pruitt, they let industry leaders write environmental policy and frame it as an exercise in job creation.
But it isn’t Scott Pruitt’s job to increase employment. As head of the EPA, it’s his responsibility to limit dangerous pollution. Ignoring and curtailing scientific inquiry is the only way he can justify failing to do what he’s supposed to do.
60
A national fee on carbon emission sources, supported by prominent old-style Republicans, like George Schultz, would achieve the necessary goal of combatting climate change while simplifying the regulation burden
5
As a scientist, the irresponsible policies of the current administration are maddening and destructive. It would be one thing if scientific research resembled ancient alchemy, where the interpretation of results were more imagined than reasoned. In the current administration, there is purposeful ignorance of sound research based on scientific method to serve greedy fantasies.
I was a young adult when President Nixon created the EPA to determine solutions to the pervasive and often deadly pollution of air, water, and soil. Children had been born with unexplainable deformities and asthma was alarmingly on the rise, cancers and other illnesses afflicted thousands concentrated in areas of intense chemical by-product or dumping pollution. People died.
Most of these illnesses and deaths were preventable as shown by regulation based on scientific studies.
It is a grevious assault on humanity when those with power find people expendable. In my view, such assaults are criminal.
167
What Trump's supporters don't understand is the poor blue collar wage earners are the ones most affected by climate events and the relaxing of labor rules governing workplace exposures to toxic substances.
54
Before the science negating policy debacles play havoc with the public health and wellbeing and provoke a strong public reaction, it is better to shut doors to keep science, data, and rules away from the dark corridors of power at the Washington DC. That should be the only explanation for the public health and environment threatening policy moves by the EPA chief Scott Pruitt, and why prefers groping in the darkness of night instead of seeing things in broad daylight.
18
His policy of only using publicly available data is keeping Americans in the dark? That is a novel interpretation.
Suppose he used secret data for policy you didn't like? You would have no recourse.
Present in 1970, at the beginning, personal reflections. When the EPA was born 1970-12-02 I was introducing a course at the University of Rochester, Geology and Public Policy. The reason: As a Fulbright Lecturer in Oulu, Finland, I had learned about scientific studies of acid rain and mercury in fish as the first steps in understanding the price of human actions for the health of all living things.
The final course that I taught, even after retirement at the UR Medical School, Environmental Risk, dealt with the last steps, epidemiological and ecosystem analysis.
I realize now that although I hoped to interest students in these ways of thinking, what I was up to was giving myself a chance to teach myself what I had never even had heard of, let alone been taught. Visit the EPA website Time Line to see what they were.
I could not have imagined that decades later my government would as a matter of public policy set the goal of eliminating the use of science to minmize risk to human and ecosystem health.
At this point, age 86, although words fail me, art does not. By strange coincidence at midnight last night, I downloaded trumpeter Jaimie Branch "Fly or Die" suite and listened then and again at 7 AM to start the day. In the middle of that 35 minute suite I find in "The Storm" music that portrays what is happening to the country of my birth, one piece at a time, its destruction.
In sorrow and disbelief.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
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Dear Professor Lundgren,
Your assessment is tragically accurate. I was awakened by the ecological stirrings and evidence ; yet like so many the problem seemed so vast and I had no insight on as to how to take effective action. Today I’ve come to understand that we all must find our own way to engage in finding and applying solutions. Dr Thomas Lovejoy has shown me there is no silver bullet, rather there are numerous singular solutions that can generate a meaningful response. Your contribution inspires me to take up the challenge and take action in my thoughts, word and deed and at the voting both. We all are the solution. Engagement a must.
44
@ Zev Guber, thanks first for reminding me of Thomas Lovejoy. Will look more carefully at him later. Yes, there is no silver bullet, and therein lies the reason for calling that first course Geology and Public Policy even though that subject became Environmental Geology as did even 2 editions of my textbook. At the beginning I saw a few too many environmentalists not seeming to understand how good the science should be before it might be applied. Not easy to find an approach as an individual but one individual approach does present itself to every one of us - voting in the Mid Term elections. As an individual I have tried without any success at all to get the New York Times to present articles about two renewable energy technologies never even mentioned, both of major importance in Sweden: 1) Incineration of solid-waste after recycling combined with (here in Linköping) conversion of food and human waste to biogas, 2) Heat pumps, all types, with Ground-Source Geothermal the most important.
The virtue of heat pumps is that an individual can choose to heat and cool a single room or a whole building, just fit the design to the need.
Thanks.
Larry
1
Given the scope of Mr. Pruitt's mendacity and the global destruction it invites, or better said, guarantees, I find the language in this article to be rather mild. All humans who now walk this earth can no longer assume that "life will go on" or that "progress will continue". The denial of Trump, the destructive zeal of Pruitt, of Inhofe and their ilk assure us that we get be the first humans that will to go to our graves knowing we take pretty much everyone and everything down with us. I wonder how that fact will ultimately affect the "Markets"?
45
Laissez Faire Capitalism. The pursuit of making as much money as possible in complete disregard of every one else. Ultimately it always ends badly. “In Money We Trust”.
45
Anyone who has read Jane Mayer's book "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/books/review/dark-money-by-jane-mayer... will understand where Pruitt's approach is coming from. The Kochs and their network of far-right plutocrats have long wanted to eviscerate the EPA. Their profits - unconstrained by environmental concerns - are much more important to them than the health of this nation or of the planet itself.
246
We've come a long way, baby -- all the way from informed Citizens to consumers, commodities, and the civically clueless. The so-called right have stolen our Democracy under the cover of Capitalism. Thank you, the 'gift' that just keeps on giving: 'Citizens United.'
163
You are right, I have read the book and in it greed is described well and it’s name is Koch.
11
I suggest a practical approach whereby Pruitt can be the guinea pig to suffer his own denials/
If Pruitt asserts that toxins in his air, water and environment are not a danger, then he won't mind if we pump them into his office air, his residence(s), his children's residences, his spouse's workplace.
When he's on the road he will be required to wear a respirator that delivers the appropriate levels of chemicals to his lungs.
His meals and liquids all require special additions - or perhaps he can just carry the equivalent of a bottle of toxic water and a tablet he must consume every day.
What, you say that's unfair? Why is it unfair of him to condemn the rest of us if he isn't willing to do so himself?
53
For the last year, behavior at the EPA
has nothing over what one saw in the Soviet
Union under Stalin when ideology required
the suppression of genetics in agricultural policy.
Lyssenkoism has a mirror image in pruittism. Where
ideology trumps evidence, and well understood and practiced scientific principles, then one suppresses the latter and plays up only the former.
One might think the analogy is far fetched, but I
encourage reflecting upon the fact that it is not
pruitt alone who is responsible for the purging of
scientific practice from decision making.
Far deeper and much more significant is that this
ideology dominates a majority of both
chambers of congress. There is no one in the
trumpican party's majority who sits on a committee
relevant to EPA's oversight who has spoken
against anything that pruitt has been responsible for.
This reflects a systemic collapse for using science as a basis for making decisions in regards to anything EPA deals with.
What pruitt is responsible for is also supported by a significant part of the population. A recent Gallup
poll revealed that among "independents" there has
been a significant increase among those who are in the
"muddled middle" vis a vis climate change. How
that could happen after the fall and winter
storms and fires is beyond incredible.
It shows that too many have lost interest in having the ability to understand the physical world.
Denialism has been far too effective seeding irrational doubts.
30
The fossil fuel industry, particularly the Kochs and other private holders, have spent tens of millions to discredit the research of climate specialists in the eyes of the public. Their profits are all that matter to them.
32
Indeed. Speaker Ryan has mused that free meals may fill children's bellies but leave them with empty souls.
1
The Editorial Board places its faith in peer reviewed scientific studies. The scientists slice and dice secret data and provide summary analysis from which they draw conclusions.
How exactly do the peer reviewers evaluate the evidence without having access to the secret data? For all they know, the original scientists threw out all data that did not conform to their hypothesis. The peer reviewers are only able to evaluate that if the summary is accurate, that the conclusions are reasonable.
There is epidemical evidence available from the State of California, which strips off personal data. Other states are free to do the same, and there is significant data available in insurance company records and Medicare/Medicaid records. But many researchers do not like to use the data and do not press for legislation that would allow the data to be used by having the personal data detached because that would subject their slicing, dicing, removal of data not supporting their theories to be evaluated by their peers.
The problem with this article and the bulk of the commenters comprehension is that they know nothing of science or the scientific method.
If a scientist in a white coat tells them something, or if a politician tells them the scientists said something, they fall in line behind authority.
When research is based on secret data, it cannot be evaluated, and it also explains why so little of the research is reproducible.
Pruitt is demanding science.
6
You (and Pruitt) miss the point.
The data is not hidden from peer reviewers, only the identities of those providing it.
You (and Pruitt) also ignore the very great benefits such studies have produced.
It's laughable to accuse commenters here —most if not all of whom have a pretty good understanding of science — of bowing to authority, when it is the Right that unhesitatingly places its faith in politicians and non-scientists.
208
Sorry, this is so far from truth as to be risible. Of course, all scientists do not work in the tradition of Galileo, Newton, Einstein. Some even pretend to do research in economics, when what they actually do is trawl for factoids that fit their predetermined conclusions.
13
For decades now, scientists all over the world, from all walks of life and social, religious and political background, day after day discover evidence proving unprecedentedly rapid and dangerous global warming.
That's why the entire world, except for Syria, just decided to start solving this problem, remember?
And now you believe that when identities of people interviewed in the US are being kept secret (for obvious reasons of privacy - which is precisely necessary to guarantee that the results are objective and valid), somehow the DATA (= results of those interviews) are secret too ... ?
One of the first rules of any scientific method is to CAREFULLY read the article you want to criticize, before criticizing it.
You clearly didn't do so.
A second rule is that IF you want to propose the hypothesis that "Pruitt is demanding science" as being true, the least you're expected to do is to come up with some arguments showing that it's NOT just your personal opinion, built on "hearsay", but actually a proven truth. Unfortunately, you're not doing that either.
So what exactly is a "scientific method" according to you, more precisely ... ??
31
Can we just stick to the facts? Studies that include data from participants guaranteed confidentiality generally fall into two categories -- individuals who fear unwarranted retaliation and those motivated by revenge rather than the truth. Sources who are acting in good faith are of great value. Sources motivated by personal grudges are unreliable. To assume that everyone who talks about corporate misconduct is telling the truth is senseless prejudice. It would be nice if folks pursued the truth rather than preconceived notions of what the truth might be.
3
"It would be nice if folks pursued the truth rather than preconceived notions of what the truth might be." What else can a Bible Christian do but accept the predetermined truth?
3
The problem with science is that its revelations are completely at odds with revelations scripture.
Scott Pruitt believes scripture. He's therefore on a scripturally mandated mission to fight a biblical battle against heresy.
Pruitt would have us believe his purge is based in a legalistic battle.
Others say he's waging a mercenary war on behalf of industry greed.
But still others suspect that the root of Scott Pruitt's radical anti-environmentalism is religion.
Has anyone actually asked him if his activism is based in the 2007 Southern Baptist Conference manifesto that proclaimed anthropogenic climate change science to be unchristian?
If Pruitt dances around the answer with his fast-talking lawerisms, journalists should talk to his fellow parishioners at the First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Okla. where Pruitt is a deacon & report on his real motives.
If Pruitt is a Dominionist, & sees his job as a biblical mission to align environmental protections with god's commandment to Adam to use up the earth, then the citizenry should at least be apprised of where he's really coming from.
43
With all respect, that's completely absurd.
First of all, most Nobel prize scientists happen to be Christians, and it's even Christians who invented universities, centuries ago.
Secondly, there's absolutely nothing in the Bible that says that a literal interpretation of a text written two thousand years ago is the one that should be adopted in order to understand God's word - on the contrary, for a very long time now theologians have deepened their understanding of the Revelation through scientifically valid analyses of those texts.
Finally, Pruitt is simply being extremely cynical and corrupt, and both are condemned unequivocally by no matter what Christian faith. That he's constantly paying lip service to a certain form of Christian rhetoric cannot possibly be interpreted as if he's someone who somehow would truly believe what the Bible says.
And by the way, God nover told Adam to "use up the earth", he told him to take care of it, EVEN in the most literal sense.
27
Most Nobel prize winners were neither southern Baptists nor Dominionists. I think that to a one, they have had the intellectual prowess to recognize that having the Christian church take over American government would ruin the country. And the notion that Pruitt deserves to be considered in the same breath as serious theologians and religious thinkers, well, that's absurd.
Genesis 1:26 English Standard Version (ESV)
26 Then God said, “Let us make man[a] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Interpretation is everything. In general the Christian faith didn't see the word dominion as stewardship. In recent times that has changed (thank goodness), but some extreme right wing Christian doctrine still sees very little value in stewardship. Domination and use to the benefit of man can be interpreted as the opposite of stewardship. Add the denial of science because interpretation of the creation of the earth in 6 days isn't supported by fossil records and there's a fast decent down a slippery slope of denial. I don't know if Pruitt uses his faith as a guiding force in his destruction of the EPA, but Christianity and stewardship have not always been aligned. Maybe Pruitt just finds it convenient to hide behind that antiquated Christian interpretation while killing the planet. It would be nice to see a reputable news org. look into it.
Pruitt should be asked how he makes decisions. Is he interested in the best estimates of the outcomes of his decisions? How would he obtain the best estimates of those outcomes? We can then discuss his responses.
He may really believe that his preordained opinions about the outcomes are the best input to the estimates of the outcomes. He may not care about the outcomes, except for the short-term political impact or economic impact of those decisions.
It is my observation that many of the Trump appointees do not want to consider anything but the short term outlook. They either do not believe any of the estimates of longer term effects or do not care about those longer term effects.
9
Businesses and economists care only about projections of the next quarter concerning their own stock portfolios an earning statements. All while hiding behind their religion and their flag both of which
are have long been threadbare.
1
Thank you very much. For many of us, distracted by nothing more momentous than the prospects for life on this planet, nothing is more urgent than a sustained inquiry into the price of ignoring this interest. So much evidence, so many witnesses gather, to the effect that this government struggles vigorously to shield its policies from that information, that anything you can do, will be welcome. Please continue.
7
What if Pruitt or Trump had a diagnosis of cancer in a tumor that is found at a physical exam? Would they have the same denial of the diagnosis as they do for climate etc.? Denial and delusion are dangerous psychological responses, no matter what the issue.
28
Pruitt's days are numbered. His financial scandals are getting too embarrassing for even the Trump administration. He's renting luxury apartments for himself and his daughter from an energy lobbyist...for less money than DC pays to shelter a homeless person every night.
Pruitt probably talks to his lobbyist landlord while he's in his $25,000 private phone booth.
You know your scandal is bad when even Trump is alarmed.
109
It seems safe to assume there's a high potential for corruption in anyone who is willing to work for this administration.
13
Once again, an article that suggests conservatives are anti-science. That is too general. A more accurate statement is that they deny any knowledge that crosses paths with an irrational fear they were born with from evolution. It is the root cause why they think the way they do and it is unconscious, automatic "thinking". If you think everyone is out to get you, the most common symptom of paranoia, and government is obviously out to get conservatives, then your brain would automatically deflect any evidence that suggests government solutions to problems. It is blatantly obvious and the root cause of AGW denial and many others. Conservatives should not be in positions of public policy because they unconsciously prioritize their fears over the well-being of the people, country, and yes, the planet. It should be really obvious, yet few people understand this simple fact of evolution. We were all born with fear in our DNA and it is on a continuum. The more you have, the further right on the political spectrum until you reach a point where rational, fact-based fear begins to resemble symptoms of paranoia.
8
Yours is a typical straw man argument. You make a false statement about the opinions of others and then argue that their position is wrong.
The majority of voters who have a college degree vote Republican. The proportion of Republican voters who believe the Bible is literally true is around 5-10%. They used to be Democrats, but when Democrats established that abortion was a sacrament, they fled.
Let's discuss scientific positions of the Democrat equivalent of the Republican flat earthers. There are those who think vaccines cause autism and would prefer their child die or be blinded by scarlet fever than give them a vaccine. There are those who are willing to pay extra for GMO or gluten free food, and think the government should be protecting them from GMO. California has just determined that, like cigarettes, coffee should carry a cancer warning. They believe that DDT was causing the extinction of eagles. They believe that Round-up causes cancer. They believe that talcum powder causes cancer.
For every Republican that has some belief that is not supported by science, there are two Democrats.
With respect to global warming, most Republicans object, not to the science, but to the proposed Democrat solutions. Given that China is on track to add more CO2 to the atmosphere 2016-2030 than mankind has added since the inception of the industrial revolution, we think that we should be devoting resources to relocation, not increasing energy costs.
1
We all realize that Republicans lie eagerly and often, but when they repeatedly say they are anti-science and deny the evidence of their own senses, I think we have to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe even these inveterate liars when they say they are anti-science.
5
I know tomorrow is INTERNATIONAL FACT-CHECKING DAY, but I feel the need to post today. Some of the claims here are pure April Fools.
Ebmem, at least you didn't "make a false statement about the opinions of others and then argue that their position is wrong." You cut out the middle(straw)man and just make false statements outright. Namely, your first "fact": "The majority of voters who have a college degree vote Republican."
According to Pew, "In the 2016 election, a wide gap in presidential preferences emerged between those with and without a college degree. College graduates backed Clinton by a 9-point margin... while those without a college degree backed Trump 52%-44%. This is by far the widest gap in support among college graduates and non-college graduates in exit polls dating back to 1980."
Brookings agrees and the NYT, which you apparently read.The NYT is more forgiving toward your position in their exit polling, showing majorities for Trump among those with "some college/associates degree" or less, but that's not your assertion.
I also liked "for every Republican that has some belief that is not supported by science, there are two Democrats." I'd like to see the scientific polling data that supports that conclusion.
But of course, it's a scientific exit poll, so I don't expect the people who need to believe it to believe it. But according to some research, for a 1/3 of the population, educating them on this stuff is counterproductive.
Sigh. Happy Spring?
Why doesn't Pruitt take the process one step further and set up his permanent headquarters in Bakersfield-Delano, California, reputedly the most polluted city in the United States (December 2017). There he can prove, once and for all, that the toxic emissions are simply a figment of the public’s imagination, and that the E.P.A is a complete and utter waste of taxpayer dollars – money that could be better spent on attending international climate-denial meetings and enlarging his personal security detail.
37
Mr.Pruitt's science free EPA is a threat to years of progress.I remember living in California before 1975 when the first catalytic converters were mandated. We could see the air we were breathing and children were warned against vigorous exercise on smoggy days.His data denying is unconscionable.For this administration money "trump's" truth!
45
I hope and wish that in a not so distant future, Pruitt will be arrested and charged with criminal negligence and more. The man is a walking disaster waiting to happen. To some, he is brilliant only because they are criminal themselves. Get rid of this breathing pollutant.
229
Scott Pruitt is a clear and present danger to this country by doing his best to harm the environment in favor of corporate riches.
The fact that he is doing exactly what his boss wants him to do is further evidence Trump is also doing his best to destroy this country's health and well being.
While Mueller is trying to get to the truth of this mess, the motives and the money trails, Trump and Pruitt need to be removed from office. They are damaging the very air we breathe.
47
This administration and its abhorrent grotesque excuse for a leader revel in the glories of ignorance and all the unimpeded negligence in the pursuit of profits that such bliss then allows.
The editors are entirely correct in concluding that the behaviors of these people are driven by fear and not true intellectual deficits. Such people fully realize that well-conducted scientific studies by multiple research groups over a long period eventually point us to the truth, and when that truth conflicts with the goals of people in power or in business, the simplest (and most cowardly) approach is to ignore, deny, obstruct, and ultimately silence the voices of truth and reason.
We have seen this daily with this administration and it follows the pattern of all governments that descend into the narcissism and cronyism of authoritarians who only wish to create their own truth. Nowhere more than in Scott Pruitt's Environmental De-protection Agency has this been more true. Pruitt and Trump should be reviled for eternity by any thinking person who cares about this country and this beautiful world we live in - what's left of it.
22
In accurately describing this regressive Administration's astonishingly ignorant rejection of widely accepted modern science, the first word that leapt into my mind was "compromised". As in how Trump and his Cabinet Secretaries have been so easily bought off by the voracious interests of Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas, etc., etc.
Since the Inauguration of our Fake President, the special interest spigots have been gushing money in his regime's direction while conflicts of interest between favored industries and the Executive Department have exploded. The ever expanding "Trump Swamp" has acquired a rich, algae-green color for future plans must be supported and well provided for. MAGA.
20
I really hope people who vote Republican are happy with themselves. This deconstruction of our precious regulatory protections is a purely Republican phenomena. Pruitt and Zinke should be tried for crimes against humanity. And the sooner Trump is out of office the better.
153
Well since conservatives apparently believe that "thoughts and prayers" can magically reduce gun violence, why would anyone expect them to believe in data and science.
They rather promote "gut feeling", instincts and faith... sounds very much like the Dark Ages.
18
In reality, it's the Middle Ages that invented universities and turned being a scientist into a real profession.
During the 13th century, the universities of Paris and London eagerly studied Arab in order to be able to understand the original texts written by the great ancient Greek philosophers, and the great progress mathematics and medicine had made thanks to Jewish, Christian and most of all Muslim Arabs during the period when Muslims were ruling in Bagdad and taking over the Roman empire all around the Mediterranean.
By rejecting science, today's GOP is going back way beyond Greek Antiquity, in order words is regressing more than 2,500 years...
3
No Studies, no data, no rules. Of course. Why should anyone expect the EPA to be different from the WH or any other agency?
27
It is dereliction of duty, for any officer of State to receive money privately in order to weaken the defence of the nation in betrayal of his public sworn duty. The money so derived can be seen as held on a constructive trust for the Treasury. You don't have to prosecute him. Just tell him to declare all his assets, and require him to swear in public a reason he should keep any, including his name.
12
If, as the majority* hopes, that Trump only has one term or less, my concern is how easily and rapidly his successor can unravel the damage that his Administration has perpetrated in the meantime.
*That is, barring gerrymandering and the bizarre electoral college system which has surely had its day. When can we expect the equality of every vote, i.e., true democracy?
11
Lordy! Much, much less...
Putting Scott Pruitt in charge of the EPA is like putting Al Capone in charge of the police.
One can only hope that sanity prevails, and that the Trump phenomenon and its horrid entourage, runs its twisted course quickly.
29
Who needs Pruitt's EPA? There have been enough studies, plenty of data and lots of rules to ensure that individual Americans and corporations take responsibility for their own actions and their own choices. I don't need the EPA to tell me to drive fuel efficient small cars to reduce emissions, that smoking is dangerous to my health and that of others around me, that I do not buy any goods or services from corporations that pollute the air, land and water, that recycling is good for the environment. What is the use of billions spent on studies and data, if the findings are going to be ignored and laws already on the books are not enforceable? It should be clear by now that carcinogens and mutagens in our air, water and land have greatly increased the incidence of cancers in America that cannot be attributed to other factors.
6
Who needs the police or the courts or prisons? We have hundreds of years of history and thousands of years of scripture making clear the difference between good and evil. I don't need the police departments or judges telling me what to do. What is the use of billions spent on law enforcement if people are yet going to break laws? It should be clear by now how we all need to act. (I'm extending you argument to a broader context. Somehow it doesn't seem to work very well.)
26
"Billions spent on studies and data" is fantasy. "Millions" is the right measure. The "billions" and sometimes "trillions" are spent on failed military procurement programs, foreign invasions of choice, and tax gifts to -- who else? -- billionaires and billionaire companies.
28
"There have been enough studies, plenty of data and lots of rules to ensure that individual Americans and corporations take responsibility for their own actions and their own choices."
Are you familiar with the concept of negative externalities? Environmental pollution is literally the textbook example.
22
During Scott Pruitt’s time as Oklahoma attorney general, Oklahoma developed the worst human-made-earthquake problem in the country. The state as a whole was slow to deal with the problem, and, for many years, it did not admit the quakes had a human origin.
Before 2009—the state only saw one or two quakes per year. In 2016, Oklahoma had one to two quakes per day thanks to the joys of unregulated fracking and well wastewater injection.
In 2015, Oklahoma endured 857 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3.0 or higher, more than struck the rest of the lower 48 states combined.
Scott Pruitt could have sided with the people of Oklahoma whose homes were being destroyed by frackers, but Pruitt only sides with corporate people.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/01/scott-pruitt-and-okl...
Scott Pruitt is the Environmental Pollution Agency director.
What Pruitt helped do for Oklahoma is what he will do for America.
Register, vote and resist on November 6 2018 before the Trump Toilet flushes all of America down a filthy drain.
685
One or two quakes a day would have been mild. We were having ten or more quakes a day. Even though fracking has slowed, the quakes still happen, just not as often. I felt my own house lurch a couple of weeks ago. A few of my friends had their tornado shelters crack open and fill with water.
118
frequency and severity - recent quakes of 5.7 and 5.8 magnitude have occurred.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9318_Oklahoma_earthquake_swarms
We can only hope the massive oil and gas storage facilities in the state are engineered for a progressively deteriorating seismic environment, otherwise Pruitt & Co. will treat us to an Oklahoma fossil fuel Fukishima.
Well once the school week is shortened to one 2 our long day students and their families can spend more time praying for relief.
I don't think it's as much fear as contempt. Since this administration never wants to study anything lest the result challenge the foregone conclusions that each agency has set for itself, why study the issue?
Without any pesky data, officials can essentially recreate expectations across the public that any new or revised policies must be rooted in facts.
The problem with denying science is that, nature will simply do what nature does, irrespective of whether or not man knows why.
It should be interesting, going forward, that the increasingly Orwellian GOP will simply do what it will, science or no science.
And if things really start heating up, if they lied about the science to begin with, why should they do anything differently to explain phenomenon that goes by any other name but what it actually is.
27
When the EPA was first created, several of its early decisions having far-reaching effects on the U.S. were made in complete opposition or denial of scientific facts.
Since those were decisions following liberal-progressive ideals, however, the liberal American media simply giggled and cooed about it.
We made it as a nation nearly two centuries without an EPA and we could do pretty well not having it for a couple of decades now.
3
In real life, we had a very high number of Americans dying because of toxic substances - numbers that today you only see in the third world.
I never understood how conservatives could first denounce liberals for doing X, and then eagerly support so-called conservative politicians when they do the exact same thing.
Finally, science has proven that two centuries ago, the climate was still perfectly okay, whereas today we urgently have to act if we want our grand-children to have a climate comparable to ours rather than much worse.
That's why it's totally irrational to refer to the fact that two centuries ago there was no EPA in order to argue that today we don't need an EPA either, you see?
96
Do you recall when LA resembled Beijing? How about rivers catching fire? I remember foam on the Hudson.
Selective in your memory, EPA has been quite effective. As are most government regulations, or more precisely "protections".
Seat belts, airbags, crumple zones, mileage standards did not bankrupt the auto industry afterall. Such cry babies, they.
(Now there is an idea to drive the right crazy, refer to regulations as protections!)
60
To what are you alluding when you say, "several of its early decisions having far-reaching effects on the U.S. were made in complete opposition or denial of scientific facts"? Please name your evidence and spare us the name-calling.
Also your argument does not make sense to me. We made it nearly two centuries without antibiotics, jet airplanes, chemo-therapy, or civil rights for people of color. Take away any of those, or the EPA, for a couple of decades and I'm confident this country will completely self-destruct.
41
An oligarchy's priority is to amass wealth, and today that means increase shareholder profits. Science denial is an important part of that aim. Pruitt is, of course, a tool of the oligarchy, and with the Koch brothers and Sinclair Broadcasting enlarging its propaganda machines, with a congress too enmeshed with campaign backers, and the best lobbyists money can buy short circuiting a citizen's government, we have an uphill battle over melting snowcaps. But its the only battle worth fighting. If we lose it, we lose everything.
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We toss around the word ‘oligarch’ in this country as if the remove of democracy keeps us safe and superior. But the more I read about the Trump Cabinet’s conflicts, denials and dismantling, the more I see oligarchs hiding in plain sight. And Scott Pruitt is a fine match for Trump’s own shamelessness.
16
I wake up every day and think that Pruitt and Trumps denial of science is a bad dream. The harm that this is doing to the environment, our lead of science in the world and the fact that we are in the age of science is a terrible issue which will harm America and the World greatly. I am sure that the CIA is very interested in global climate and other science change. Climate change has the potential to cause instability by populations vying for resources as climate change results in food and water shortages. Look at the drought in South Africa and the shortage of water. It is a matter of time until they start looking elsewhere for resources.
I am not sure that middle America understands this and is more concerned with immigration and gun laws then the harmful pesticides and fertilizers they use on their farms.
I only hope that this anti-science attitude is short lived and that some of it can be mitigated by Congress and the Courts until a change can be made in the White House
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A way to mitigate this anti-science republican government would be to elect a Democratic administration and congress who will put serious money into scholarships and grants to attract and educate would be research scientists.
27
Unfortunately, that is not happening anytime soon. The cost of mitigating the damage that this administration is causing may be too little too late.
The Pentagon takes climate change seriously.
2
It is not fear but greed. Trump and Pruitt and Mnuchin and Kushner, and others in the Trump circle are motivated by profits for themselves and the power elite. They are beholden to people like the Kochs, so when they leave their government posts they can be financially rewarded by the very same companies that they are rescinding laws for public safety, like coal and oil ones. The only fear they have is losing their power which Trump is trying to not only maintain but increase.
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I don't think Pruitt abandoning a scientific approach to scientific issues is a matter of disdain or fear.
His rejection of science is based on two facts:
- the GOP, for decades now, needs wealthy donors who only care about themselves, and those happen to be people who want to increase the money they're making in fossil fuel and other industries through abusing the government.
- for two decades now, Fox News has made its audience believe that there is no such a thing as science, and that every policy decision is a mere matter of ideology. So now, in order to pander to that common believe among conservative voters, Pruitt HAS to do things that prove that indeed, he's anti-science.
Just read Breitbart's pieces on climate change, for instance, and you cannot but notice that instead of working with a scientist as a science editor, they're using a professional fiction writer on the one hand, and someone with a PhD in ... theology, on the other hand. Both "journalists" are constantly publishing articles that claim to show that global warming is a hoax, and although their arguments are extremely easy to refute (you don't even need science to refute them, basic logical reasoning is more than enough), most commentators don't even read those articles, let alone fact-check. They blindly believe them.
Conservatism, as a philosophy, never has been against facing reality as it has been proven to be. It never had to invent "alternative facts". Today's GOP is no longer "conservative".
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Ana Luisa, as usual, is right, but the GOP for decades has not been conservative.
20
I remember a SNL skit where a teacher, in a valiant attempt to energize his students into voicing dissent, starts sayings things like "day is night", "black is white", etc. Then, as a disillusioned class refuses to take the bait, the teacher allows his resignation to register. I wonder if Pruitt's management style doesn't require the same eye rolling tactics as the SNL teacher in order to get by.
8
"A near record amount of coal-fired electricity is poised to go offline this year. Set to retire in the United States this year are some 13 gigawatts (GW) at more than a dozen units—"
-U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) 2018
Pruitt can cozy up to the coal industry all he wants. It's the "power industry" that's calling the shots when it comes to burning coal as a fuel for electricity production. And they've been shutting them down for years. Their old and too costly to maintain.
Alternative energy is the future, and the power industry is well aware of it. They are placing more sun and wind power on the grid every year.
Pruitt and the coal industry will go the way of the dinosaur.
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We can only hope that humans don't also go the way of the dinosaur first.
11
It can't come fast enough for Pruitt, who is a disgrace to humanity.
9
Pruitt denies science because science is inconvenient. Inconvenient for the polluters, for the fossil fuel producers, for the chemical companies, for all those whose profits depend on poisoning the air, the water, and the ground. Pruitt makes decisions based on political considerations, not on any science, and in doing so he is willing to sacrifice the health of all citizens for money. He has no scientific expertise but that doesn't deter him.
And it has just come to light that he stays in lodging owned by a couple with direct lobbying ties to companies that are regulated by the E.P.A. His rent is substantially below prevailing market rates as well. So we have in Pruitt an administrator who is intent on gutting his agency, who ignores the advice of experts, who is unethical at best and who is in thrall to a multitude of polluting corporations whom he is supposed to regulate.
I'd say this makes him a perfect Trump appointee.
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Of course Scott Pruitt would be grossly unqualified for any ambitions he harbors for a governorship or the presidency (but, considering the current occupant, the bar is lower than low). And it goes without saying that Pruitt's CV, resistance to science, and utility to business interests make him an unacceptable fit for the EPA.
The only glimmer of hope is that Pruitt's financial recklessness has cast a harsh light on him. Between the onscene costs of his first class travels and a recent revelation of a sweetheart living arrangement offer he got from the wife of an energy lobbyist, the dollar trail may cut short his ambitions.
It is a shame that so many care not for the fate of our planet, or for scientific integrity, but money still raises alarms.
79
I attended an environmental college. All the facts are against Pruitt. But the planet's salvation does not seem to be in the top fifty of this administration's priorities. Muzzling people is more in their line of thought. They disdain scientists who have studied this for years. Other advanced countries have acknowledged climate change. And the dangers of emissions. Just look at Hong Kong where people have to wear masks because of the smog. Trump is willing to destroy this country. And yet no one seems to be able to stop him. Where are the Democrats? Where are the sane Republicans? We need an uproar. NOW!
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Some of those folks from Hong Kong wear masks when they visit New York too.
And it's to the point where "sane republican" is almost an oxymoron. Given what the ideology represents, you've gotta be some combination of stupid, crazy and just plain bad to even want to go there. Our polarized politics manifest the simple fact that no one who's half decent wants to go anywhere near them. I mean, yikes. Think about it: we're talking about people - millions of them - who look at Donald Trump and think "Cool, smart guy; I'm glad he's our president".
35
Remind sane Republicans, their vote is secret. No one has to know you voted Democrat, because you know they are correct. You are also voting the future of your children and grandchildren. Show them you care for their lives.
17
That is exactly my feeling reading the comments. We are all sitting around reading the horrors done by this administration! We need to stand up and fight these monsters before they finish the job of destroying us! We are in denial and naively hoping for people to vote with intelligence and pragmatism. They will prevail if we keep quiet! The American Dream is a fake, mind numbing, destructive capitalist dream!
14
The Republican wrecking crew is doing their best to undermine our government for the benefit of their wealthy donors. There is no way that extreme rightwing Republicans should have large majorities at the state and national level when exit polls indicate votes are being shifted to the right. According to the exit polls. Bush did not win in 2000 and 2004, Trump did not win the Electoral College, and Obama won both races by larger margins.
"Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections" [2004 Presidential Election]
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pisBdNLmo-A
Republican Stephen Spoonamore, Computer Security Expert, on Electronic Voting Machines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyByZx5GEaw&list=PL5B57EAC39FB8D42C
Part 1 - It’s a network people
Part 2 - Electronic voting machines are a national security threat
Part 3 - The genie is out of the bottle...
Part 4 - Fifty ways to steal an election
Part 5 - Mike Connell: Bush IT Guru
Part 6 - The Rapp family: Ohio election coverup
Part 7 - Evangelical Christians and electronic voting machines
Part 8 - What part don't you understand...[hand-counted] paper ballots please
Part 9 - McCain/Palin by...
Part 10 - People should doubt the vote...because it's being stolen
The vote is the bedrock of a democracy, yet our vote-counting process has been outsourced to a handful of extreme rightwing corporations that tally our votes in "secret” on "proprietary software” when elections are a public trust.
#HandCountedBallotsNow!
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Two must reads on computerized voting:
Victoria Collier: How to Rig an Election https://tinyurl.com/y9xx63f6
“Damning reports have been issued by researchers from Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Rice, and Stanford Universities, the Brennan Center, and the GAO (none of them institutions hospitable to ‘tinfoil hat’ conspiracy theorists). Experts describe appalling security flaws, from the potential for systemwide vote-rigging viruses to the use of cheap, easily replicated keys—the same kind used on jukeboxes and hotel mini-bars—to open the machines themselves.”
Josh Mitteldorf: Intro to Election Theft in America (part 1 of 4) https://tinyurl.com/yanc473c
“Are votes in American elections being counted fairly and accurately? In an open democracy worthy of the name this should not be a question for forensic science, but in 21st century America that's just what it is. The U.S. is unique in the developed world in counting votes with proprietary software that has been ruled a trade secret, not open to inspection even by local officials whose responsibility it is to administer elections.
“As we have learned there is stiff resistance to looking at the ballots. So we are left looking at statistics and anecdotes, trying to determine whether vote counts are honest and reliable. The evidence does not inspire confidence. But whatever you think of the evidence there is no justification for a system without the possibility of public verification.”
#DemocracyDemandsTransparentVoteCounting
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/opinion/2016-exit-polls-election.html...
"“The short answer is that the exit polls are wrong,” Matthew DeBell, a senior scholar at Stanford’s Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, "
"The Pew Research Center and the Center for American Progress have produced methodologically sophisticated surveys of the electorate that sharply contradict 2016 exit polls."
"Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, specializes in political polling. The major problem with exit polls, he wrote in an email, is that
it is very difficult to weight an exit poll to the target population, especially on the night of the election. The reason is that we don’t know yet what the electorate’s demographics will be when the voting is happening. The best that exit pollsters can do is record the approximate age, race, and gender of people who refuse to take the survey (based on what the exit pollster thinks they look like), but this only allows them to weight on three variables, and these factors aren’t even measured very precisely."
"Trevor Thompson, vice president of NORC ... at the University of Chicago, emailed me:
The overrepresentation of college-educated voters, and especially those with postgraduate degrees, has long been a known issue with the in-person exit poll.
He then added:
The bottom line is we need to have much better data for the health of our democracy.
10
Len,
The media, including most of independent media, treats computerized election fraud as the third rail of American politics.
Exit polls are scientific. The pollsters select precincts which have predicted past election winners. Then they select respondents to match the demographics of the area.
Exit polls are the international gold standard. Our State Department uses exit polls to verify elections in other countries. A discrepancy above 2 percent raises a red flag and an investigation and recount follow. As a result, elections have been overturned in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia.
Why exit polls matter:
https://tinyurl.com/hkwvxts
Canada, Japan, Australia, Germany, Italy, and other democracies rely on exit polls to announce the winners on election night (the hand counts are usually completed the next day) because their exit polls fall within the margin of error of 1-2 percent. In the U.S., discrepancies between exit polls and the recorded have been as high as 8, 10, 12 percent since we moved to computerized voting in 2002. They fell within the margin of error before 2002.
41
Mr. Pruitt, while eager to deny confidentiality to his victims, is busy spending lots of our money to guarantee his own. There's that $25,000 privacy booth in his office so nobody can hear him working with lobbyists and, for all we know, taking bribes (after all, there's no record, so we may as well assume the worst). There are the first class flights and extended security so he need never be exposed to a member of the public who is paying attention and worries about our human future on this planet. He's much more concerned about protecting his buddies in big fossil and the Kochtopus.
Sadly, he seems to value his own life much more than he does that of the people he is supposed to serve. Poisons for us, walls around himself.
He appears to have nothing but contempt for the collective wisdom and knowledge of those who study and work in the fields that are relevant to environmental protection and point out the dangers he embraces.
Most recently, to add to this list, is the expensive flight to Morocco to tout LNG sales (not his job) which appears closely related to his cheap DC rental.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-30/epa-chief-s-50-a-nigh...
You'd think this influence peddler would be rich. So many of Trump's swamp seem eager, like many kleptocrats, to save small amounts and treat themselves well at public expense, when they could easily afford to pay their own way.
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