It has been a tumultuous beginning to the Trump presidency. Resistance numbers have been greater than his support numbers. Denial has reached new heights with the emergence of “alternative facts”, otherwise known as lies that fly in the face of clear evidence.
In the midst of all of this, confirmation hearings for Scott Pruitt for the directorship of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been taking place. Of all the ill suited candidates for Trump’s cabinet, this may be the worst.
Pruitt has several lawsuits pending against the EPA of which he seeks to be the director. At his confirmation hearing several Senators had great difficulty to get him to say that he would recuse himself from his own lawsuits pending against his own agency.
He has a long history of opposing environmental regulations. He is a strong fossil fuel supporter. According to the New York Times he came out with a statement, founded on a fossil fuel organization document, to support the fossil fuel industry.
He has been an active climate change skeptic. During the hearing he said that his views on climate change are “immaterial” to his job as director of the EPA. When pressed on his past activities, which seem to make him supremely unsuitable for the job of director of the EPA, he acknowledged the concern of climate change and said he would do a review. Senator Bernie Sanders noted that after years of established scientific evidence on climate change and the dangers of fracking technology, he is still doing reviews.
Interestingly, Scott Pruitt is a conservative Christian. He is deacon of the First Baptist Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma and a member of the trustees of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. As a former Baptist and seminary graduate, I can only assume what motivates him. Baptists are very good at so emphasizing conversion and the inner life, that they can easily miss clear external problems, even when they are staring them in the face. I am afraid that with Scott Pruitt we have a frightening indicator of the irrelevance of conservative Christianity to the burning issues of the day.
We simply have got to find a better way than this. All people of good will and all faith traditions need to work together to care for and protect our planet’s health. Part of this struggle will also be to strive for a more equitable distribution of the world’s resources. However, and this is important, let us also look within and find that inner light and strength that can propel us forward to make this world a better and healthier place.
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