US President-elect Donald has picked Scott Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma and a skeptic of climate change, to head the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), drawing criticism from environmental activists.
Pruitt, 48, is one of the main leaders of a Republican battle against President Barack Obama’s policies to curb global warming, a phenomena that Trump does not believe exists.
During his campaign, Trump insisted that climate change was a climatehoax “created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.”
The Republican president-elect has indicated that he would pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions which entered into force on November 4.
Pruitt is part of a legal action by 28 states against the EPA over the agency’s so-called Clean Power Plan, which seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Describing the EPA’s plan as “unlawful and…