EPA chief Pruitt lays out welcome mat for polluters

According to records obtained by E&E News, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt’s schedule shows several previously undisclosed meetings with fossil fuel interests during his first few weeks on the job. He even spoke with nearly 50 CEOs from the oil and gas industry who paid to meet at President Trump’s hotel near the White House. The day before that event, Pruitt met with Chevron’s top executives to discuss regulatory reform of the oil and gas sector. The head of Murray Energy, one of America’s biggest coal companies, spent time with Pruitt on the same day President Trump went to EPA headquarters and signed an executive order to kill the Clean Power Plan. Pruitt has also met with chemical companies like Dow and energy utilities like Duke power. The list goes on.

So, who’s left out in the cold? Environmentalists, who have had “virtually no interactions” with the EPA chief—aside from Pruitt’s meeting with the Nature Conservancy and Audubon Society on Earth Day. Pruitt’s welcome mat for polluters is par for the course—more than 4,000 newly released e-mails from his time as Oklahoma attorney general contain schedules and lists of speaking engagements, detailing dozens of meetings between Pruitt and executives and lobbyists from the coal, oil, and gas industries.