After Pruitt ignored an FOIA request for studies supporting his view that humans are not the primary contributor to climate change, environmental advocates turned to the courts.
Scott Pruitt, Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has made no secret of his skepticism about the human role in driving climate change. But thanks to a June 1 ruling by Beryl Howell, chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, Pruitt can no longer keep the reasoning behind his opinion secret.
According to the ruling, Pruitt has until July 11 to produce “an explanation for any documents withheld in full or in part” from a FOIA request filed by the nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the plaintiff in this case.
PEER’s FOIA was submitted in response to Pruitt’s comments on the CNBC program “Squawk Box” on March 9, 2017. During his appearance, Pruitt said that “there’s a tremendous disagreement about the impact [of] human activity on the climate” and that he “would not agree that [humans are] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
Because these statements run counter to the scientific consensus about anthropogenic climate change, and represent a reversal of the EPA’s position on the subject, PEER’s FOIA request asked Pruitt to produce the research that informed his opinion, as well as any EPA studies that find that human activity is not the primary driver of climate change.
The EPA missed the deadline to respond to the request, and when PEER filed a suit to compel an answer, the agency dodged it again by calling the legal action “a trap” and “a fishing expedition,” which PEER denies.