We already know that Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is a climate denier. He doesn’t care what scientists have to say about the very issues he oversees. That’s why it won’t surprise you that he’s completely behind the push for coal and oil, despite the harm extracting those resources.
What is surprising, maybe, is the reason he’s giving for doing that.
It has nothing to do with science. Instead, he says drilling for oil and mining coal is what God wants us to do. He said as much during an interview with (you guessed it) the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“The ‘environmental left’ tells us that, though we have natural resources like natural gas and oil and coal, and though we can feed the world, we should keep those things in the ground, put up fences and be about prohibition,” Pruitt said. “That’s wrongheaded and I think it’s counter to what we should be about.”
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Pruitt believes God commands us to take care of the environment and that also means to use what He has provided. “The biblical world view with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we’ve been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind.”
In other words, God gave us this planet, so Scott Pruitt thinks we can destroy it. It’s what Jesus wanted.
Somehow, he ignores the equally defensible Christian argument that, if God gave us this planet (not to mention the sun and the wind), we ought to protect it and rely more on renewable energy.
What’s the biblical defense, I wonder, for polluting the air and water? For introducing more harmful chemicals in the environment? Because Pruitt has rolled back regulations on those fronts, too.
He’s basically a conspiracy theorist who ignores the experts he leads, then justifies his sabotage by quoting a Bible verse. And the Religious Right eats it up because this administration can do no wrong for a large number of white evangelicals who make up the Trump administration’s base.
(Screenshot via YouTube. Thanks to Barbara for the link)