Energy

Here’s Who Trump Could Ask To Head The EPA

(REUTERS/Mike Segar)

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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Republican nominee Donald Trump won the presidential election and will now have to pick someone to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Trump once called for the elimination of the EPA, but now wants to “refocus the EPA on its core mission of ensuring clean air, and clean, safe drinking water for all Americans.” Trump plans on rolling back EPA’s signature global warming regulation as well as other rules hamstringing the coal industry.

To carry out his plans for EPA, Trump is considering a long list of potential candidates to lead the agency. Politico reports Trump is considering “Venture capitalist Robert Grady is also a contender” as one candidate.

Politico reports these other names are being considered:

Joe Aiello is the director of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Environmental Safety and Quality Assurance; Carol Comer, the commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, who was appointed by Mike Pence; and Leslie Rutledge, the attorney general of Arkansas.

Reports also indicate Trump may ask Myron Ebell, the director of global warming and international environmental policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, to head the EPA.

Ebell currently heads Trump’s EPA transition team and is a critic of President Barack Obama’s global warming agenda. Ebell’s name has already sparked the ire of environmentalists who decry him as a “climate denier.”

Environmentalists have already posted a petition on the White House’s “We The People” site to not allow Ebell to lead the EPA transition team. It’s only gotten 3,003 signatures — 96,999 short of the threshold needed to be considered by Obama.

“Donald Trump has chosen a leading climate skeptic to head the EPA transition,” reads the petition. “Do not let a man who denies science in the name of profit lead the nation in environmental protection.”

Ebell has been one of the leading free-market voices on energy and environment issues, criticizing EPA’s so-called Clean Power Plan (CPP) and the United Nations emissions treaty. Ebell’s also been a critic of taxpayer dollars being used to subsidized green energy projects.

Trump has promised to get rid of the CPP and “cancel” the UN global warming deal. Ebell didn’t get into specifics on what Trump’s exact priorities will be at EPA, telling The Daily Caller News Foundation he had “no comment” on the matter.

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