Trump's EPA nominee spars with Bernie Sanders over climate change

President-elect Donald Trump's pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrongly suggested on Wednesday that scientists still don't know exactly why climate change is happening.

Scott Pruitt, the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma, claimed during his Senate confirmation hearing that climate experts are still debating the extent to which human activity is driving up global temperatures. 

In reality, most climate scientists debate the precise impacts human-caused climate change is having, as well as the rate and severity of global warming yet to come — but they don't debate that human activity is the leading cause.

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"I believe the ability to measure with precision the degree of human activity's impact on the climate is subject to more debate, on whether the climate is changing or whether human activity contributes to it," Pruitt said Wednesday in a tense exchange with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a prominent climate advocate who lost the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Pruitt had previously acknowledged at the hearing that "the climate is changing and human activity contributes to that in some manner." 

He also distanced himself from his prospective boss, saying he did not agree with Trump's earlier claims that the Chinese government fabricated the idea of climate change. 

"I do not believe climate change is a hoax," Pruitt told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

As EPA administrator, Pruitt would oversee the most important federal programs to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, including regulations of carbon dioxide from power plants and methane emissions from natural gas well sites and pipelines.

Image: nasa giss.

When Sanders pressed Pruitt to give his personal opinion on why the climate was changing, the EPA nominee replied that his feelings on the topic were "immaterial" to his role as potential EPA chief.

"Really?" Sanders interjected, incredulously. "You are going to be the head of the agency to protect the environment, and your personal feelings about whether climate change is caused by human activity is immaterial?"

Pruitt responded indirectly, saying, "Senator, I believe the administrator has a very important role to perform in regulating CO2."

Counter to Pruitt's claims of uncertainty, the overwhelming majority of the world's climate scientists agree that human activity — such as burning fossil fuels and clear-cutting forests — is the No. 1 reason why the planet is warming at such a staggering rate.

In fact, during the confirmation hearing, global climate monitoring agencies including NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UK Met Office announced that 2016 was the warmest year on record. 

The agencies concluded that human-caused global warming was primarily responsible for the dangerous climate milestone.

Scientists and environmentalists have expressed alarm that the top U.S. office for regulating climate change could be run by a person who disputes mainstream climate science.

Earlier this week, over 170 environmental and social justice groups sent a letter to the Senate committee that claimed Pruitt's "views and actions run counter to the EPA's critical mission to protect our health and the environment."

His critics also note that Pruitt has spent years fighting to dismantle the EPA's key environmental rules, often with the support of Oklahoma's powerful oil and gas industry.

Pruitt is part of a coalition of Republican attorneys general who reportedly forged an alliance with some of the nation's biggest oil and gas producers to fight against the Obama administration's environmental agenda.

Image: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Democratic senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Kamala Harris also pushed Pruitt to disclose whether, if confirmed as the EPA chief, he would recuse himself from the litigation he brought against the EPA as Oklahoma's attorney general.

Pruitt said only that he would step down from those cases if directed by the EPA's Ethics Office.

The attorney general's top supporters on the Senate committee applauded Pruitt's efforts to limit "federal overreach" by the EPA and defend the jobs of hundreds of thousands of workers in the fossil fuel industry.

"As head of the EPA, attorney general Pruitt will ensure that the agency fulfills the role delegated to it by the laws passed by Congress," Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, the Senate's most prominent climate change-denier, said during the hearing.