Pruitt unqualified to lead EPA
Scott Pruitt, President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is absolutely unqualified for the post.
Pruitt has spent his career attempting to take environmental protection out of the EPA’s mission, and he will likely be the most hostile EPA administrator toward clean air and safe drinking water in history. He is a climate change skeptic. “Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind,” he wrote earlier this year in a column for the National Review.
He believes in the bogus notion that there is a war on coal. He also pledged to “cancel” the Paris climate deal, which came into force in November. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, he has been a key player in legal challenges against EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Pruitt has sued the EPA on several occasions, most recently over President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions from power plants.
Indeed, The New York Times has shown that Pruitt worked secretly with some of the largest oil and gas companies and Oklahoma’s coal-burning electric utility to try to overturn a large part of the Obama administration’s regulations on air emissions, water pollution and endangered animals.
In this time of rapid climate change, we cannot afford to place an anti-science, ideological corporate toady at the helm of the EPA.
Greg Rossel
Troy
Tax carbon emissions
In their Dec. 7 BDN OpEd, Harold Borns and Sharon Tisher point out that increased carbon emissions dating from the Industrial Revolution have led to higher temperatures, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. They have the credentials to know whereof they speak, and we have seen first-hand the effects on Maine — damage to our fisheries, with the shrimp fishery closed again; less snow to attract winter tourism; and tick-borne diseases increasing.
Borns and Tisher also offer a way forward: Ending fossil fuel subsidies and setting up a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend, which would tax carbon as a pollutant and return all the money collected directly to American households. That is the market-based strategy promoted by Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a grass-roots and nonpartisan organization with several chapters in Maine, including one in Bangor.
A growing number of scientists and public policy experts believe a carbon fee and dividend is the simplest, most effective way to bring about the necessary transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Luckily, Maine has plenty of renewable energy resources that could create jobs here.
Christina Diebold
Bangor
Rural economy should embrace solar
Being from a rural area, and moving to the city, one thing I have noticed is that even some of the most liberal folks I know cannot grasp the challenges and economic problems of folks who live in rural America. Perhaps this disconnect comes from a lack of experience in living in rural poverty, from the folks who are generally in positions of power at the state and city level.
I remember distinctly working with my hands growing up, and I still have friends who make a living with their hands. They are hard-working people who go out in 32-degree weather and who go out in 90-degree weather. They are proud folks who are great at what they do, and take pride in the work they do.
I truly, truly believe that the rural economies should and could be invested in with jobs in solar and wind. As far as the market is concerned, solar is where it’s at. As far as I’m concerned, the opportunity to expand into the rural market place for work in solar or wind should be a priority. It should be a priority because of the hard-working, blue-collar mentality.
Andrew LaVogue
Portland