Skip to content Skip to footer

Scott Pruitt Is Killing Us

Scott Pruitt is the perfect Trump cabinet secretary.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks to the press at a news conference at the Environmental Protection Agency on April 2, 2018, in Washington, DC.

Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, who first gained Donald Trump’s attention by devoting his life to the utter destruction of the EPA for the benefit of his friends in the fossil fuel industry, has turned that agency into a three-letter wrecking ball. He wholeheartedly believes that his agency’s role is to serve polluters and big business, but he is also in service to Trump, who titters with glee every time some Obama-era protection is erased.

You have to see it all in order to really encompass it, and this isn’t even all of it. What began with a headline in November of 2016 — “Trump Wins” — quickly accelerated into a headlong windsprint toward our collective doom:

Scott Pruitt Confirmed as EPA Chief, Washington Post, 02/17/2017

“Science” Scrubbed From EPA’s Mission Statement, New Republic, 03/07/2017

EPA Chief Downplays Role Played by Carbon Dioxide in Climate Change, CNBC, 03/09/2017

Dakota Access Pipeline Prepared for Use, Indianz.com, 03/27/2017

Obama Administration Climate Actions Undone by Executive Order, White House, 03/28/2017

Keystone XL Pipeline Approved, Truthout, 03/31/2017

Pruitt Calls for Exit From Paris Agreement, ThinkProgress, 4/14/2017

Trump Signs Order to Vastly Expand Offshore Oil Drilling, Facing South, 04/19/2017

EPA Scrubs Climate Change Website, EPA, 04/28/2017

EPA Dismisses Science Advisors, The Atlantic, 05/05/2017

US Pulls Out of Paris Climate Agreement, Truthout, 06/01/2017

Report: EPA Enforcement Lags Under Trump, Environmental Integrity Project, 08/10/2017

Trump Revokes Flood Standards Accounting for Sea-Level Rise, White House, 08/15/2017

Mining Health Study Halted; Climate Advisory Panel Disbanded, National Geographic, 08/22/2017

Trump EPA Poised to Scrap Clean Power Plan, Truthout, 10/10/2017

Trump Drops Climate Change From List of National Security Threats, White House, 12/18/2017

EPA Loosens Regulations on Toxic Air Pollution, EPA, 01/25/2018

Trump Proposes Cuts to Climate and Clean-Energy Programs, White House, 02/12/2018

FEMA Expels “Climate Change” From Strategic Plan, NPR, 03/16/2018

EPA Starts Rollback of Car Emission Standards, DeSmogBlog, 04/08/2018

Pruitt Unveils Controversial “Transparency” Rule Limiting What Research EPA Can Use, Washington Post, 04/24/2018

That last one is a real doozy: “A chorus of scientists and public health groups warn that the rule would effectively block the EPA from relying on long-standing, landmark studies on the harmful effects of air pollution and pesticide exposure,” reports the Post. In short, Pruitt is attacking basic science itself. Some of these reports used the personal medical data of patients, and so were not made public. This kind of data was previously used to link leaded gasoline to neurological disorders and air pollution to thousands upon thousands of deaths. This kind of data, in other words, saved lives. This decision, like many others Pruitt has made, will eventually come with a body count.

Anthropogenic climate change is fact, according to the US National Academy of Sciences and the UK’s Royal Society’s most recent report. It bluntly explains the evidence “that the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased and are still increasing rapidly, that climate change is occurring, and that most of the recent change is almost certainly due to emissions of greenhouse gases caused by human activities.” It does not get any more straightforward than that, and anyone trying to tell you different is probably getting paid to do so.

The so-called Butterfly Effect is very much involved in the matter of climate change. Thanks to the vagaries of planetary ecology, a smokestack spitting poison in Shenzhen, China, has a direct effect on Nebraska, and vice versa. According to a large study performed by The Lancet, some nine million people a year die as an immediate result of pollution. The World Health Organization predicts 5,000,000 deaths due to climate change between the years 2020 and 2050.

Those numbers are almost certainly underestimated, because this beast feeds on itself. Climate change causes pollution — see Puerto Rico and Houston after the last hurricane season — and pollution causes climate change. Combine that with the global climate refugee crises to come and a dwindling supply of clean drinking water, and we are presented with the potential for a planetary scourging the likes of which have not been seen since the time of the dinosaurs.

We can’t go much further in this without noting for posterity that Scott Pruitt appears to be a damn crook. The man must believe he is the Treasury Secretary, because he sure as hell thinks he has keys to the vault. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on first-class and military flights, useless sound-proof telephones, non-approved pay raises for friendly staffers, a security detail to rival the president’s, and never mind the sweetheart apartment deals with lobbyists and their spouses. The fact that he is seemingly stealing from us while killing us truly makes him the perfect Trump Cabinet Secretary.

He is killing us, too. All of us. This is no longer a theoretical exercise. This is right now:

In tests conducted in late 2017, one in three coal-fired power plants nationwide detected “statistically significant” amounts of contaminants, including harmful chemicals like arsenic, in the groundwater around their facilities.

This information, which utility companies had to post on their websites in March, became public for the first time under an Obama-era environmental rule regulating coal ash, the waste generated from burning coal.

But now, just as residents are getting their first indication of whether neighboring plants might pose a threat, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt is advancing a proposal to amend the rule, giving states the authority to lessen consequences and weaken requirements for polluting power plants.

All this is happening for one reason alone: Scott Pruitt and his benefactor Donald Trump are helping the fossil fuel industry perform one last massive act of profit-taking before the ocean comes and brines the whole business out of existence. This is The Last Grab, and the EPA is making it as easy as possible.

Scott Pruitt’s obvious disdain for the rules of his office would require his removal even if he were the most eco-friendly EPA head in the history of the agency. That he is literally and deliberately dumping oil, toxic gas and coal ash on the planet as a favor to his energy industry pals makes the necessity of his removal an immediate thing. So long as Trump keeps protecting him, however, Scott Pruitt is safe as kittens.

In a just world, there would be actual legal consequences for Pruitt’s behavior. This is not as farfetched as it sounds: Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil and several other oil giants are currently being sued in federal court for their role in causing the climate crisis. Chevron’s attorneys went so far as to admit, in open court, that the company accepts the reality of climate change as established fact.

If Chevron can be brought to the bar for crimes against the environment, why not Scott Pruitt?

We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.

As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.

Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.

As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.

At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.

Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.

You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.