The U.S. Senate’s office buildings in Washington D.C. were filled by clean air and water advocates today ahead of Polluting Scott Pruitt’s confirmation hearing to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Scott Pruitt running the EPA would be like an arsonist running the fire department, which accounts for the widespread opposition to his nomination. Advocates came out to tell the senate to “Stop Pruitt” and wore clean air masks signaling the need for an EPA which protects American families rather than positioning itself as "Every Polluters Ally."
Just outside the committee hearing room inside the Senate, a seemingly endless line formed outside made up of a wide array of advocates from the public who were not allowed to observe the hearing. Included there were mothers, environmental activists, and Native Americans all disturbed at what will follow in a ‘deregulated states of America’ where the right to pollute is sold to the highest bidder -- or simply given away for free.
Yesterday, ahead of today’s hearing, clean air and water advocates delivered “Pruitt Survival Kits” to members of the United States Senate.
Each “Pruitt Survival Kit” included one bottle of clean water and one high quality face mask to protect Senators from air pollution. Both will need to last for at least four years if Scott Pruitt is ultimately confirmed to head the Environmental Protection Agency, an office for which he is spectacularly unfit.
Clean air, clean water and climate advocates across the country have been outraged by Trump’s selection of Pruitt, who is notorious for attempting to undermine national safeguards against Mercury pollution; eliminating the environmental enforcement office he oversaw in his state as Attorney General; copy-pasting an oil and gas industry letter he actually sent to the White House; and leading the assault on virtually every major new protection for families and public health advanced by the EPA since he has been in office.
If Scott Pruitt seizes the Environmental Protection Agency, he’ll try and implement an agenda that would threaten the air and water of every American family. The EPA was designed to protect clean water and clean air, but Pruitt has already proven that his loyalty is to the oil, gas and coal industries and their profits.
Outside the hearing room there were four people arrested for their advocacy. A woman from the Lakota Sioux Tribe protested the ongoing efforts to construct the Dakota Access Pipeline and the threats to Native American rights and sovereignty.
