Pruitt should not lead the EPA

By Austreberto Hernandez, Las Vegas

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2017 | 1 a.m.

President Donald Trump campaigned with the promise that he would drain the swamp in Washington. However, his picks of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department and climate-denying Rick Perry for the Energy Department suggest that Trump intends to purge the filth from private sectors and contaminate the swamp — quite the opposite of what he promised.

Pruitt is a climate science denier who, as attorney general for Oklahoma, regularly conspired with the fossil-fuel industry to attack EPA protections. His own website biography describes him as “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” He cannot be trusted to head the EPA, an agency charged with protecting all Americans from threats to their water, air and health.

As an asthmatic who has long understood the effects of poor air quality in very specific and low-income neighborhoods — the neighborhoods where my parents could afford to raise me — I’ve witnessed how those who deny climate change never have the misfortune of encountering firsthand the disastrous effects of climate change, especially on their health and the health of their children.

Pruitt’s record isn’t pretty. He got caught working hand in glove with the oil industry, going so far as to send letters to the White House with his signature and on his stationary that actually had been written by Big Oil lobbyists.

That’s why I’m calling on Sen. Dean Heller to not only oppose this nomination but to reject any nominee who intends to continue to do harm to our environment for the sake of deregulating businesses that profit at the expense of our environment. Nothing less than our children’s health and the health of our planet is at stake.