This week’s must read: The New Climate Change Evangelists are… Conservatives?! (Hey, we got a laugh over the “new” part too… we’ve been at it for awhile.)
This week’s must watch: I’m just one person: what can I do? (Hint: more than you think.)
In climate change news this week, carbon tax advocate Rex Tillerson was confirmed as Secretary of State, while Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt got one step closer to the helm at the Environmental Protection Agency after he passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under suspension of the rules.
Secretary of the Interior nominee Rep. Ryan Zinke and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, tapped to lead the Department of Energy, both advanced through the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and await floor consideration.
Myron Ebell, the climate change denier who led the Environmental Protection Agency transition team for President Donald Trump, said in an interview that an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate change agreement could come within “days.” He said under Trump the U.S. will “clearly change its course on climate policy” and claimed the President is “pretty clear that the problem or the crisis has been overblown and overstated.” If the president doesn’t act under executive order, Ebell predicted he could “do it as part of a larger package.”
“I expect Donald Trump to be very assiduous in keeping his promises, despite all of the flack he is going to get from his opponents,” Ebell said. He called entities that support the Paris agreement part of the “climate industrial complex” and said the environmental movement poses “the greatest threat to freedom and prosperity in the modern world.”
That’s it for us this week. Stay tuned next Friday for another episode of Days of our Climate Lives…