EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday that talking about climate change while a hurricane sliced through the Caribbean on its way to Florida was “very, very insensitive” to the people of Florida.
“Here’s the issue,” Scott Pruitt told CNN. “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm; versus helping people, or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.”
“[T]o discuss the cause and effect of these storms, there’s the… place (and time) to do that, it’s not now,” he said.
Pruitt, the fossil fuel-friendly EPA administrator who sued the agency more than a dozen times before leading it, similarly said in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey’s landfall in Texas that it was “opportunistic” and “misplaced” to talk about climate change.
He added to CNN: “Congress should address that at some point. And Congress hasn’t. All I’m saying to you is, to use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to this [sic] people in Florida.”
Still, though Pruitt doesn’t want to talk about climate change, his agency, and the Trump administration as a whole, has been proactive in slashing programs meant to address it.
Trump on June 1 announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, making the second largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world one of only three countries not signed on to the agreement.
And Trump effectively quashed the Clean Power Plan, the keystone environmental regulation of the Obama presidency, among a slew of other ignored or eliminated regulations.
Trump — who has called the concept of climate change a “hoax” meant to disadvantage the United States economically — and Pruitt aren’t alone in ignoring climate science.
Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s Department of Environmental Protection banned its official from using the terms “climate change” and “global warming” in official communications, the Miami Herald reported in 2015.
Several federal agencies have similarly suppressed information about climate change, according to InsideClimate News and other outlets.
Pruitt you dumb prick.
I live here directly in Irma’s path.
Go fuck yourself and make sure you never get within a mile of me .
I will hunt you down and kick you in the nuts
He is SUCH a sensitive guy. So let’s make a date to chat afterwards, shall we, Scott? In the meantime, I hope you get sucked into Irma’s vortex.
Pruitt is the living embodiment of “insensate”.
what’s insensitive is sticking your head in the ground and not only pretending it isn’t happening, but actively pursuing policies to make it worse
I have only two words, holy shit!