(Photo: Delwin; Edited: LW / TO)
This story has been updated.
Kathleen Hartnett White, President Trump’s pick to run the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is probably best known for her idealistic view of fossil fuels. In 2014, she suggested that energy from fossil fuels “dissolved the economic justification for slavery” in the British Empire. As the Texas Observer noted at the time, coal mining fueled industrialization that actually increased demand for cotton picked by colonial slaves in the early 19th century.
Hartnett White has other controversial ideas. She told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in November that climate science is still “subject to debate,” and the degree that human-caused carbon pollution is contributing to climate disruption is “uncertain.” White’s remarks prompted 300 scientists and scholars to sign a letter “defending scientific integrity” and opposing her nomination, which seemed all but doomed until Trump resubmitted her name to Congress this week.
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry appointed Hartnett White to serve as chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) from 2003 to 2007, and her track record alarmed Democrats considering her nomination. Under Hartnett White’s supervision, the TCEQ gave federal regulators faulty data about the amount of radiation in Texas drinking water, which had exceeded federal limits in several communities, according to reports.
“It is virtually impossible to find anyone who can, after watching Ms. White’s hearing, sincerely say that she is well-qualified for the important job to which she has been nominated,” said ranking member Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware), in a statement on Monday. He added that he had “never sat through a hearing as excruciating as Ms. White’s” in 17 years of serving in the Senate.
As head the White House environmental quality office, Hartnett White would have influence over how federal agencies regulate drinking water. Tap water used by 170 million…