Top staffers for Environmental Protection Agency-hating EPA chief Scott Pruitt announced the agency’s Smart Sectors program Tuesday. Under this, the EPA will work in close partnership with industries it regulates. In a press release, Pruitt said:
“When we consider American business as a partner, as opposed to an adversary, we can achieve better environmental outcomes” [...] “The Smart Sectors program is designed to effectively engage business partners throughout the regulatory process. The previous administration created a narrative that you can’t be pro-business and pro-environment. This program is one of the many ways we can address that false choice and work together to protect the environment. When industries and regulators better understand each other, the economy, public, and the environment all benefit.”
Golly, that sounds just fantastic. Cooperative efforts to protect the environment are better than adversarial ones. And, in fact, there has been quite a lot of agency-industry-environmental-activist cooperation since the EPA was founded nearly 50 years ago.
But since the guy announcing this program of cooperation was at the forefront of the adversarial approach by initiating or joining 14 lawsuits against the EPA while he was attorney general of Oklahoma, it’s time to break out the salt shaker. What Pruitt is really talking about is making the EPA knuckle under whenever industry raises objections to the mildest agency initiatives.
Naturally, industry loves this plan. The press release includes laudatory comments from representatives of aerospace, agriculture, automotive, chemical manufacturing, construction, electronics, forestry and wood products, iron and steel manufacturing, hard-rock mining, oil and gas, and utilities. Notably absent, however, are comments from environmental advocates.
Pruitt has a very interesting approach to cooperation. As The New York Times informed readers in July, he “has moved to undo, delay or otherwise block more than 30 environmental rules, a regulatory rollback larger in scope than any other over so short a time in the agency’s 47-year history, according to experts in environmental law.”
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2fL4ARf
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