Environment

EPA Chief Wants To Replace Obama's Clean Power Plan, Not Just Kill It

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said in his first testimony before Congress on 7 December that he plans to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, instead of just killing it outright.

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EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt confirmed he will start as soon as next month a so-called "red team/blue team" exercise to allow experts to debate the science of climate change, which critics see as an attempt to undermine the consensus that human emissions of carbon are making global warming worse.
Credit: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP File.

 

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt said in his first testimony before Congress on 7 December that he plans to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, instead of just killing it outright.

“We are going to be introducing a replacement rule, too,” Pruitt said, in response to a question from Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-California) during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

But Pruitt also criticized the 2009 agency rule known as the endangerment finding, which forces the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. He said the process to establish the endangerment finding was "accelerated and "short-shrifted."

And he confirmed he will start as soon as next month a so-called “red team/blue team” exercise to allow experts to debate the science of climate change, which critics see as an attempt to undermine the consensus that human emissions of carbon are making global warming worse.

Pruitt’s comments were in his first hour of testimony on the morning of 7 December before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Read the full story here.