Richard Nixon wasn’t known as a tree-hugging environmentalist who was known to eat twigs and pine cones.
Yet the 37th president of the United States, a Republican, had the good sense to do something that today’s Republicans apparently now regret. He formed the Environmental Protection Agency.
What has happened to the EPA since 1970, when President Nixon created this agency? It has become the bogeyman for Republicans. The GOP hates the agency. Republicans say the EPA has been too tough on businesses, has enacted too many regulations that businesses must follow — or else.
And to what end? To make the air and water cleaner and to protect our Earth from humankind’s more destructive impulses.
Donald J. Trump is forming his new government and has nominated Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be the new head of the EPA.
Pruitt, to put it mildly, is no friend of the agency. He’s a “drill baby drill” kind of guy. He’s a devoted friend of the fossil fuel industry. He doesn’t accept the notion that climate change is real and that its main culprit is humankind.
Pruitt actually has sued the EPA over its insistence that climate change is manmade.
This is the guy Trump wants now to lead the agency?
This is another head-scratcher.
Indeed, the Washington Post reports that Pruitt’s appointment follows a curious pattern set by the president-elect: “He is the third of Trump’s appointees who have key philosophical differences with the missions of the agencies they have been tapped to run. Ben Carson, named to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has expressed a deep aversion to the social safety net programs and fair housing initiatives that have been central to that agency’s activities. Betsy DeVos, named education secretary, has a passion for private school vouchers that critics say undercut the public school systems at the core of the government’s mission.”
Now, there’s Pruitt.
I’m still puzzled, though, at how Republicans have morphed into this anti-EPA political party, given how one of the GOP lions — Richard Nixon — breathed life into the agency.
It’s a new day. It’s a new Republican Party, although many old-time GOP hands aren’t yet sure what the new party is going to look like.
The new president, elected as a Republican, has declared war on the EPA. The agency’s new boss appears ready to start lobbing the grenades.