US President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday called climate change “a huge issue,” but not the “greatest crisis,” drawing fire from Democrats at his confirmation hearing over the regulatory rollbacks that he has made in six months as the agency’s acting administrator.
Republicans on the Republican-majority US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works mostly had praise for Andrew Wheeler, who has served as the agency’s acting head since EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s resignation amid ethics scandals in July.
However, Democrats pressed Wheeler about his work as a lobbyist helping an influential coal magnate meet with Trump administration officials before his nomination to the EPA, his moves on deregulation and what they said is his inattention to the growing dangers from climate change.
“You seem to be consistently doing things that undermine the health and safety of this nation,” Democratic US Senator Ed Markey told Wheeler.
Markey asked him why he was pulling back on regulations that proponents have said protect human health and the environment.
“I believe we are moving forward” on protections, Wheeler responded.
Wheeler cited changes that he initiated to roll back future mileage standards for automobiles and to ease clampdowns on coal-fired power plants introduced under former US president Barack Obama.
He said EPA staff, whom he did not identify, had concluded that those rollbacks would ultimately lead to health gains.
Environmental groups and formal assessments from the EPA and other agencies have contested that, saying that the changes would increase pollution and increase harm to people and the climate.
Democratic Senator Tom Carper said that the rollbacks in automobile mileage standards and toxic mercury emissions under Wheeler were examples of unsafe deregulation and went beyond what industries themselves wanted.
US Senator Bernie Sanders said that Wheeler failed to mention climate change in his initial remarks to lawmakers.
“Do you agree that climate change is a global crisis?” Sanders asked, shouting at times.
“I would not call it the greatest crisis,” Wheeler said. “I would call it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.”
Wheeler told lawmakers that he had yet to read a massive government climate-change report released late last year, which said that anthropogenic climate change is already underway.
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