Trump’s pick to head Council on Environmental Quality: “Carbon dioxide is harmless”

President Trump wants to add yet another climate change denier to an administration that’s already overwhelmingly anti-science. He has nominated Kathleen Hartnett White to chair the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which coordinates environmental efforts across the country and helps develop energy policies. Hartnett White is the former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and is currently a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that counts the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil among its donors. She’s also an outspoken denier of the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused climate change and a critic of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Endangerment Finding,” which classifies carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as pollutants that must be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Originally considered for EPA administrator, Hartnett White ultimately lost out on that position to fellow carbon apologist Scott Pruitt. “The truth is that our bodies, blood, and bones are built of carbon!” she wrote last year in an op-ed titled “Restrain the Imperial EPA.” “Carbon dioxide is a necessary nutrient for plant life, acting as the catalyst for the most essential energy conversion process on planet earth: photosynthesis.” True, but those facts disprove carbon-fueled climate change about as much as a snowball on the Senate floor.