Trump’s EPA chief Scott Pruitt faced some tough grilling from Chris Wallace of Fox News this Sunday over his history of climate science-denial and the Trump administration’s gutting of environmental regulations.
“You think that rewriting and, in fact, doing away with the clean power plan is going to improve air quality, which you say is a major goal?” Wallace asked Pruitt.
Pruitt said that regulations in place were put there by “executive fiat” by former president Barack Obama, adding that President Trump’s rolling back of regulations signaled a return to the “rule of law.”
Wallace pointed out that deregulation now put China in the driver’s seat when it comes to getting the U.S. to reduce emissions, adding that Pruitt’s statements regarding climate science puts him in the minority when it comes to scientific consensus.
Wallace then played a clip of a “famous exchange” where Pruitt appeared on CNBC and declared that CO2 was not a “primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
“Mr. Pruitt, there are all kinds of studies that contradict you,” Wallace said. “The UN panel on climate change says it’s 95 percent likely that at least half of the temperature increase since the mid-20th century is due to human activities.”
“Mr. Pruitt, are we supposed to believe that’s all a coincidence?” Wallace asked.
Pruitt then stammered out the claim that “real issue” is figuring out “how much” humans are contributing to global warming
“Sir, you’re sugar coating what you have said,” Wallace replied. “You said that you would not agree that carbon CO2 is a primary contributor to global warming. And the question I have is, what if you’re wrong? What if, in fact, the Earth is warming, what if it is causing dramatic climate change and that we as humans through carbon emissions are contributing to it?”
“The issue is how much we contribute to it from a human activity perspective and what can be done about it from a process perspective,” Pruitt replied.
“But don’t you think the fact that we have these coal power plants belching carbon emissions into the air, you don’t think that plays a role?” the Fox News host asked.
Watch the full exchange in the video below, uploaded to YouTube by Raw Story:
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