President-elect Donald Trump is expected to pick Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to take the helm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to sources on the transition team. Pruitt is part of a coalition of state attorneys general suing the agency over the Clean Power Plan, and he has also sued over EPA’s recently announced regulations seeking to reduce methane emissions.
Pruitt wrote in an op-ed in May that the climate debate is “far from settled” and that “scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind.” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), who called himself a friend of Pruitt’s, said they feel similarly about climate change. “The world isn’t coming to an end tomorrow because of man-made gases,” Inhofe said, while calling Trump’s meeting yesterday with former Vice President Al Gore “more of a courtesy than a pivotal meeting.”