President-elect Donald Trump announced he will appoint Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Let’s be clear: Scott Pruitt has been a bitter opponent of the USEPA. Trump may as well have put a heroin dealer in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency. For Catskill Mountainkeeper, our supporters, and everyone who breathes air or drinks water, this is a disastrous decision and we need your support now more than ever.

At this critical moment in worldwide efforts to fight climate change, Trump’s choice to head the EPA is a man whose political cronies are the heads of oil and gas industry. Throughout his career as Oklahoma's Attorney General, Pruitt has put the industry above his constituents at every turn. In 2014, The New York Times revealed that Pruitt formed an “unprecedented, secretive alliance” with the nation’s top energy producers to fight Obama’s efforts to curb climate change. The chief executive of Continental Energy, an Oklahoma oil and gas company, was a co-chairman of Mr. Pruitt’s 2013 re-election campaign.

President-elect Trump and Pruitt want to kill the historic Paris climate agreement. And they have a plan to do it. First they’re plotting to rollback the Clean Power Plan -- our nation’s strategy to fulfill the Paris agreement. The Power Plan has already begun to clear the air in our communities and improve our nation’s climate profile. And we will not stand idly by as Pruitt and his cronies dismantle our best shot at avoiding climate disaster.

As one of Mountainkeeper’s strongest friends and allies, we want you to know that we are ready to fight. We will fight pipelines, bomb trains, climate change, and any proposals that harm our communities’ health and environment. And we will continue to stand for all that is good—for clean air, clean water, good food, and our natural environment.

Thank you for all you’re doing to stand behind our team as a Mountainkeeper supporter. We need your help--including your financial support--now more than ever in battling efforts to dismantle essential protections for our families and the environment to benefit the fossil fuel industry's bottom line.
 

Ramsay Adams
Executive Director