US President Donald Trump’s nominee has been sworn in to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Scott Pruitt, a fierce critic of the agency, was approved by the Republican-controlled Senate despite Democratic attempts to delay the confirmation, reports the BBC.
A judge in Oklahoma on Thursday ordered him to release, by Tuesday, emails he exchanged with oil and gas executives.
Democrats boycotted an earlier vote over his email refusal and claimed he was too close to energy companies.
They held the Senate floor through the night to put pressure on the chamber to delay the confirmation vote until the emails, which were exchanged while he was Oklahoma attorney general, were handed over.
But the Senate voted in favor of his confirmation by 52 to 46, and he was sworn in on Friday.
Pruitt, 48, had refused to hand over the emails, at the request of a liberal watchdog, for more than two years.
BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath says Pruitt is perhaps the most controversial appointment in the history of the EPA - the Oklahoma attorney general has spent years fighting the role and reach of the organization he now heads.
Hundreds of former EPA staff members wrote an open letter against his appointment, some calling him an “unqualified extremist”.
Environmental campaigners see him as an oil and gas industry stooge who is “lukewarm” on the threat posed by climate change - they fear that hard-won environmental regulations will be overturned.
Key among those regulations is the 2009 ruling that greenhouse gas emissions endanger both the environment and public health. This underpinned many of the actions taken by President Obama to curb CO2.
With Pruitt in place, it’s likely that President Trump will rapidly push ahead with orders to overturn Obama’s Clean Power Plan and his “Waters of the US” rule, something conservatives also see as an over-extension of federal power, Matt McGrath observes.
Pruitt will probably attempt to cut through the “regulatory rampage” that Republicans believe the EPA has embarked on over the past eight years - but he needs to be wary of over-reach.
President Reagan appointed Anne Gorsuch Burford to reform the EPA back in 1981 - but after failed attempts to downsize, she was out on her ear two years later.
BDST: 1556 HRS, FEB 18, 2017
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