WASHINGTON – President Trump’s nomination of Kathleen Hartnett-White to chair the Council on Environmental Quality is his latest move to give polluters unfettered, unprecedented power inside the White House and throughout the federal government, said EWG President Ken Cook.
The former head of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and a fellow at the industry-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation, Hartnett-White is a longtime climate change denier. In fact, she holds carbon dioxide, the main contributor to global warming, in high regard.
In a 2015 column published on the right-wing website Townhall.com, she wrote:
Our 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 … CO2 is an odorless, invisible, beneficial, and natural gas lacking any characteristics of a pollutant. CO2 in no way contaminates or defiles the air as genuine pollutants can.
“At least Butch and Sundance had to put some effort into robbing banks and trains,” said Cook. “If Hartnett-White joins Administrator Pruitt, polluters will stroll through the front doors of both the EPA and the White House, no questions asked, as the rampant looting of environmental and public health protection policies continues.”
