I have over 30 years of experience as an environmental professional.
I went to grad school to get a Master's degree in pollution control in part because of things that I saw at work every day that weren't regulated sufficiently at the time (early 1970s), such as: my car covered with soot from a nearby specialty steel company, a yellow river flowing by the parking lot fouled with acid coal mine drainage - I even saw guys from our research department dumping beakers of waste chemicals into storm water drains that emptied right into that river.
In my career I have worked to ensure environmental compliance, as a regulator, as a consultant, and as an environmental specialist for a major oil company.
I will be the first to agree that there is red tape that can be changed to facilitate development, but, those changes can be made without harming the environment, without removing protections already in place, and without preventing new ones from being developed.
As shown in this video put together by Bill Moyers, Scott Pruitt would be, without a doubt, the absolute worst pick to lead EPA. THE WORST!
During my career, I've sat in on meetings at Chevron, the Western States Petroleum Association, and other industry groups, and I can confirm from experience that there are LOTS of people that think just like Pruitt and don't give a damn about the environment.
I was treated as a pariah at Chevron because guys like that would get pissed off at me when I told them they needed a permit before they could build something.
Right before I quit and told my boss to go fuck himself, he told me that he was tired of hearing from his bosses that I was telling people that they needed permits every time they asked me about a new project.
Well, DUH!!! I didn't write the damn rules and that's what my job description said I was supposed to do. That was precisely why I got hired - to make damn sure that they complied with the law.
Pruitt is exactly like the guys who didn't want to play by the rules. His solution appears to be to get rid of them.
And we all, including our grandchildren, will suffer from it.
