| Filed under Be careful what you wish for, or possibly Bringing a gun to a knife fight: |
[HuffPoo] Andrew Wheeler is a former coal and mining lobbyist and a climate denier who can carry out Pruitt’s agenda, minus the headline-grabbing scandals.
Wheeler’s ascension, while expected to return stability to the scandal-struck EPA, demonstrates how the administration secured the future of its radical plan to dismantle the nation’s leading public health agency at the behest of the industries it regulates, amid the distractions of Pruitt’s humiliating final months as the agency’s second-shortest-serving administrator in history.
“He will be potentially considerably more effective, both because you don’t have the daily drama that you’ve had for the last several months and because Andy knows how the system works,” said Stan Meiburg, a former acting deputy EPA administrator who spent 39 years at the agency. “He could be more effective for the administration in achieving its policy objectives.”
Pruitt left behind a considerable legacy of halting critical regulations, reshaping the EPA’s science advisory boards and provoking an exodus of talent from the agency that could take decades to reverse. Yet roughly one-third of the regulatory rollbacks Pruitt attempted were halted by legal challenges ― setbacks widely attributed to his brash style and overeagerness to antagonize environmentalists. |