Trump Economic Adviser "Pushing" for Climate Denier and Fossil Fuel Apologist to Head EPA

picture-7018-1583982147.png
on

Stephen Moore โ€” economic adviser for Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trumpโ€™s campaign โ€” recently told Politicoโ€™s Morning Energy that he is โ€œpushingโ€ to have a climate change denier and fossil fuel promoter, Kathleen Hartnett White, named as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if Trump is elected president in November.

Buried in Politicoโ€™s daily newsletter on September 28, the news comes as the Trump campaign has also announced that another climate change denier โ€” Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) โ€” is leading Trumpโ€™s EPA transition team.

White currently serves as a fellow-in-residence at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which, like CEI, is funded by ExxonMobil and Koch Industries, and she also serves on the Trump campaignโ€™s economic advisory team. 

White co-heads the Texas Public Policy Foundationโ€™s Fueling Freedom Project, which has among its stated goals to โ€œexplain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuelsโ€ and โ€œend the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant.โ€

In addition, she formerly served as a special assistant to First Lady Nancy Reagan in the Ronald Reagan White House, as former Texas Republican Governor Rick Perryโ€™s appointee to the Texas Center on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and as an appointee to the Texas Water Development Board under then-Governor George W. Bush.

News of Whiteโ€™s possible EPA appointment comes as scientists say the planet has now permanently passed the threshold of 400 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). At a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius, the scientific consensus says we could see calamitous impacts, while many say the apparently already locked-in warming of 1.5 degrees is the safe limit

Trumpโ€™s Fracking Corps

White is only one of many Trump campaign consultants with direct ties to the hydraulic fracturing (โ€œfrackingโ€) industry.

Trumpโ€™s prospective Secretary of Energy under Trump and a key campaign energy adviser, Harold Hamm, also has an industry connection as CEO and founder of a major fracking company, Continental Resources. Continental has a stake in the building of both the northern leg of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.

Politicoโ€™s Morning Energy also reported that Larry Nichols, the co-founder and retired CEO of fracking giant Devon Energy, serves on the Trump campaign as an energy adviser. Devon Energy also funds the Texas Public Policy Foundation and CEI.

Moore told Morning Energy that Hamm, Nichols, and White are โ€œamong a small group of people who have Donald Trumpโ€™s ear on energy policy.โ€ Moore himself founded the Koch Industries-funded Club for Growth, a right-wing political fundraising group, and he and White co-authored a book published in May titled, โ€œFueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy.โ€

โ€œIโ€™ve been told by some of the staff itโ€™s been useful to them,โ€ White told SNL Energy Finance Daily in a recent interview of the book, which includes chapters promoting fracking, calling green energy a false hope, and referring to the looming creation of a โ€œSaudi America.โ€

Like White, Moore formerly worked in the Reagan White House, serving as research director for President Reaganโ€™s Privatization Commission.

Climate Denier, Fracking, Coal Promoter

On numerous instances, White has disavowed climate change and denied that it is caused by human activity. Mirroring her, Trump has dismissed climate change as a Chinese hoax. However, Trump denied saying that during the first presidential debate when brought up by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

โ€œNo matter how many times, the President, EPA and the media rant about โ€˜dirty carbon pollution,โ€™ there is no pollution about carbon itself! As a dictionary will tell you, carbon is the chemical basis of all life,โ€ White wrote in September 2015.

โ€œOur flesh, blood and bones are built of carbon. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the gas of life on this planet, an essential nutrient for plant growth on which human life depends. How craftily our government has masked these fundamental realities and the environmental benefits of fossil fuels!โ€

She also derided climate science as having been โ€œinstitutionalizedโ€ by elites and elite institutions, writing that dealing with the problem of climate change would be akin to allowing societal collapse.

โ€œThe weak science and counterproductive policies have been institutionalized in law, academia, media, and culture,โ€ she wrote in the National Review magazine in March 2016. โ€œThe elites effectively promote the specter of a planetary meltdown forecast by supposedly unequivocal science, while they dismiss the civilizational threat of trying to decarbonize human society.โ€

In August 2016, White wrote an article deriding President Barack Obamaโ€™s โ€œdeluded and illegitimate battle against climate change.โ€

Beyond denying climate change, White also serves as a major promoter of fracking for shale oil and gas and of exporting U.S.-produced oil. She has also written a report and given a speech making a โ€œmoral caseโ€ for fossil fuel production and consumption.

โ€œA rapid increase of domestic supplies of oil and gas at a time of painful gas prices; high-paying new jobs; expansion of thousands of businesses; increased federal, state, and local tax revenues: Whatโ€™s not to like?,โ€ wrote White

โ€œThe U.S. has far more energy resources than any other country, yet no other country so limits and blocks access to its own energy supply. The opposition to fracking displays this unfortunate mentality.โ€

In a recent article White concluded that the 2016 Republican Party platform โ€œis rightโ€ and that โ€œcoal is clean,โ€ while in another article in October 2013 she came out against the regulation of coal-fired power plants by the Obama administration and its Clean Power Plan.

โ€œThe imperial EPA has once again raised its scepter, this time proposing the first hard caps on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants,โ€ she wrote. โ€œThe proposed coal rule merits a deeper assessment than it has yet received. The impacts of this and other EPA rules targeting coal go far beyond the coal industry. The EPA is undermining the very foundations of economic productivity.โ€

Internal documents published by the group Common Cause show that in 2010, White attended the American Legislative Exchange Councilโ€˜s Energy, Environmental, and Agriculture Task Force meeting. The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a member of the ALEC-created State Policy Network, a collective of industry-funded think-tanks (called โ€œstink tanksโ€ by critics) which produce reports and other public relations materials in service to the right-wing corporate agenda.

โ€œGet White Outโ€

Perhaps portending what an EPA would look under her watch, in 2007 White came under fire for her inaction on climate change and environmental concerns while chairing TCEQ, with the watchdog group Public Citizen creating a billboard image near the TCEQโ€˜s headquarters demanding to โ€œGet White Outโ€ and also crafting a website by the same name.

Public Citizen said White had not done enough to halt climate change or slow mercury and air pollution and also said she tried to erode democracy by eliminating the right to comment publicly on a proposed project unless one lived within two miles of its proposed site.

โ€œChairman White has failed to lead our environmental agency in the right direction. Instead of acting to curb the serious threat from global warming, the TCEQ buried its head in the sand, and determined that global warming impacts would not have to be considered in the contested case hearings for any of the coal plant permits,โ€ Get White Outโ€™s website said of her tenure

One thing seems clear: If he wins in November, Trumpโ€™s climate and energy team will likely wipe out any U.S. progress on the ever-worsening global climate crisis.

Photo Credit: Heritage Foundation | YouTube Screenshot

picture-7018-1583982147.png
Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

Related Posts

on

Warren Stephensโ€™ family firm has at least $250 million invested in the food and agriculture sector.

Warren Stephensโ€™ family firm has at least $250 million invested in the food and agriculture sector.
on

Desperation, bad advice and lobbying likely underpinning the provinceโ€™s plan to blend hydrogen with natural gas for home heating.

Desperation, bad advice and lobbying likely underpinning the provinceโ€™s plan to blend hydrogen with natural gas for home heating.
on

With energy projects nationwide still in limbo, companies impacted by Trump-era โ€œreviewโ€ left searching for answers on unfinished projects.

With energy projects nationwide still in limbo, companies impacted by Trump-era โ€œreviewโ€ left searching for answers on unfinished projects.
on

Analyses of top podcasts show a trend of climate change denial and misinformation.

Analyses of top podcasts show a trend of climate change denial and misinformation.