No extreme climate deniers in the White House
If Donald Trump’s long list of climate-denying nominees wasn’t terrifying enough, his pick to lead the Council on Environmental Quality might be the most extreme and dangerous one yet.
Kathleen Hartnett White isn’t just your run-of-the-mill extreme right-wing climate-denier. She’s a senior fellow at the Koch brothers and Exxon-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation, believes carbon dioxide is harmless “plant food,” equates belief in climate change to “paganism,” and calls solar and wind power “unreliable and parasitic.”
But her most egregious argument against climate change asserts that coal use in the 1800s actually ended slavery in the United States, saying “fossil fuels dissolved the economic justification for slavery.”
A person with such heinous, racist, climate-denying views has no business overseeing environmental policy in our country. We must speak out now to pressure the Senate to block and resist her confirmation before it comes up for a vote.
The little-known Council on Environmental Quality plays a big role in the White House in directing environmental policy across agencies and implementing the National Environmental Policy Act, which oversees environmental permit applications. An extreme climate-denier leading this council could have an oversized and dangerous influence over permit applications for fossil fuel infrastructure projects, like dirty oil pipelines or coal and fracked natural gas export terminals.
In her recent Senate confirmation hearing, Hartnett White struggled to hide her anti-science views and long-time contempt for climate science. When asked if she believed the climate was changing, she first replied “I am uncertain,” then fumbled to correct herself. Later in the hearing, when progressive champion Sen. Jeff Merkley asked Hartnett White if she believed carbon dioxide levels have increased dramatically, she replied with a sigh and said “no.”
Political pundits have said if Harnett White is confirmed it will be “a huge win for Steve Bannon,” but activism resisting Trump’s climate-denying nominees is working.5After hundreds of thousands of progressives — including more than 170,000 CREDO members took action urging the Senate to reject Sam Clovis, Trump’s racist, climate-denying pick to be the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist, Clovis withdrew his nomination from consideration. We must speak out again in full force to block another dangerous nominee from setting foot in the Trump regime.
Originally published at act.credoaction.com.
