Stephen Moore โ economic adviser for Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trumpโs campaign โ recently told Politicoโs Morning Energy that he is โpushingโ 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 Politicoโs 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 Trumpโs 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 campaignโs economic advisory team.
White co-heads the Texas Public Policy Foundationโs Fueling Freedom Project, which has among its stated goals to โexplain the forgotten moral case for fossil fuelsโ and โend 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 Perryโs 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 Whiteโs 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.
Trumpโs Fracking Corps
White is only one of many Trump campaign consultants with direct ties to the hydraulic fracturing (โfrackingโ) industry.
Trumpโs 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.
Politicoโs 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 โamong a small group of people who have Donald Trumpโs 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, โFueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy.โ
โIโve been told by some of the staff itโs 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 โSaudi America.โ
Like White, Moore formerly worked in the Reagan White House, serving as research director for President Reaganโs 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.
โNo matter how many times, the President, EPA and the media rant about โdirty 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.
โOur 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 โinstitutionalizedโ by elites and elite institutions, writing that dealing with the problem of climate change would be akin to allowing societal collapse.
โThe 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. โThe 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 Obamaโs โdeluded 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 โmoral caseโ for fossil fuel production and consumption.
โA 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: Whatโs not to like?,โ wrote White.
โThe 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 โis rightโ and that โcoal 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.
โThe 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. โThe 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 Councilโs 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 โstink tanksโ by critics) which produce reports and other public relations materials in service to the right-wing corporate agenda.
โGet 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 TCEQโs headquarters demanding to โGet 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.
โChairman 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 Outโs website said of her tenure.
One thing seems clear: If he wins in November, Trumpโs 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
Subscribe to our newsletter
Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts