Donald Trump will name Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), according to multiple reports attributed to a Trump transition team source.
The Pruitt pick fits with the president-elect's promise to cut back the EPA and free up drilling and coal mining, and signals the likely rollback of much of President Obama's environmental agenda, according to a Reuters report.
Since becoming the top prosecutor for Oklahoma in 2011, Pruitt has launched multiple lawsuits against regulations put forward by the agency he is now going to lead, suing to block federal measures to reduce smog and curb toxic emissions from power plants.
He is also a leading figure in a legal effort by several states to throw out the EPA's Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of Obama's climate change strategy that requires states to curb CO2output.
In an interview with Reuters in September, Pruitt said he sees the Clean Power Plan as a form of federal "coercion and commandeering" of energy policy and that his state should have "sovereignty to make decisions for its own markets."
Pruitt has also said he is skeptical of climate change. In an opinion piece in an Oklahoma newspaper in 2016, he wrote that he believes the debate over global warming is "far from settled" and that scientists continue to disagree on the issue.
An overwhelming majority of scientists around the world say manmade emissions are warming the planet.
Trump vowed during his campaign to pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, saying it would put American businesses at a competitive disadvantage. Since the election, however, Trump has said he will keep an "open mind" about the climate deal, and also met with leading climate change activist and former Vice President Al Gore.
Environmental groups and former Obama officials bristled at the choice of Pruitt.
"Scott Pruitt running the EPA is like the fox guarding the henhouse," said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, which supported Trump's opponent in the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
But representatives of the oil industry, and some Republican lawmakers, were cheered by the pick.
Scott Segal, an energy industry lobbyist at Bracewell LLP, called Pruitt "a measured and articulate student of environmental law and policy" who helped "keep EPA faithful to its statutory authority and respectful of the role of the states in our system of cooperative federalism."
Sen. Jim Inhofe, R.-Okla., who is also a climate change skeptic, said "Pruitt has fought back against unconstitutional and overzealous environmental regulations like Waters of the U.S. and the Clean Power Plan; he has proven that being a good steward of the environment does not mean burdening taxpayers and businesses with red tape."
Trump aides praised Pruitt's conservative record.
"Attorney General Pruitt has a strong conservative record as a state prosecutor and has demonstrated a familiarity with laws and regulations impacting a large energy resource state," one of the aides said during a transition team briefing call on Dec. 7.
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