Critics Warn Trump Picks for EPA and Interior Would Only Serve Billionaire Polluters

As Republican-controlled Senate committees held Thursday morning confirmation hearings for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's picks to lead the Department of the Interior and Environmental Protection Agency, climate advocates warned that the pair would serve billionaire polluters, endangering the American people, the nation's natural resources, and the planet.

Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump's choice for interior secretary, appeared before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, while former New York Congressman Lee Zeldin, his nominee for EPA administrator, met with the chamber's Committee on Environment and Public Works.

"Doug Burgum, the billionaire governor of North Dakota, bought his way into Trump's orbit by launching a long-shot presidential campaign with his fortune from selling his software company to Microsoft," said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program, in a statement. "Burgum is also a real estate and technology investor who leases his own land for oil exploration to Continental Resources, run by close Trump ally Harold Hamm."

As Accountable.US, another watchdog, pointed out, Burgum also leases his land to Hess and "reportedly played a major role in facilitating an infamous meeting at Mar-a-Lago between Donald Trump and a handful of big oil CEOs," including Hamm.

Also highlighting the nominee's reported role in the Florida event "where plutocrats were asked to donate a billion dollars to Trump in exchange for gutting environmental protections," Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, quipped that "if Doug Burgum got any closer to the oil and gas industry, he'd need to wear a hard hat."

"It's clear who would benefit from him running the Department of the Interior," Manuel said. "For more than a century, our national parks and public lands and waters have been part of what makes us special as a country. The incoming Trump administration wants to give those lands and waters away to corporate polluters and billionaires. We need to protect every inch of our public lands from corporate interests and polluters so future generations can explore the treasured lands that connect us all."

Slocum similarly said that "his extensive corporate ties ensure that the Interior Department would be led by a Big Oil lackey who will prioritize the American Petroleum Institute over the American people," and "would open up the door for massive exploitation of the nation's public lands for oil, gas, coal, and mining."

"Trump has named Burgum to lead a new White House energy council, potentially named the National Energy Dominance Council," Slocum noted, citing Politico. He also pointed out that Trump has "given the interior secretary a role on the National Security Council for the first time," warning that the president-elect may use "a bogus national energy emergency" to push dirty energy.

Slocum's colleague David Arkush, director of Public Citizen's Climate Program, expressed similar concerns about Zeldin, saying that if allowed to become EPA administrator, he "would turn the agency on its head and run it for the benefit of billionaire polluters at the expense of the American people."

"In Congress, Zeldin voted repeatedly against measures to protect our environment and fix the climate crisis, and Trump says he is counting on Zeldin for 'swift deregulatory decisions,'" Arkush stressed, pointing to Zeldin's pledge "to use the EPA to 'pursue energy dominance.'"

"The U.S. is already the largest producer of petroleum products in history, is the world's largest fossil gas producer, and is exporting gas at record levels," he noted. "What's left to dominate except American families—attacking their health and pocketbooks while setting their homes on fire in pursuit of ever more fossil fuel profits?"

"The Senate should reject Trump's shameful pro-polluter, pro-billionaire, anti-environment, anti-American-people nominees," Arkush argued. Sierra Club legislative director Melinda Pierce also urged senators to reject Zeldin, to "protect the lives and livelihoods of this and all future generations."

"He has failed to adequately address the very real threat climate change poses to our nation as the American people wake each day to more deadly fires, more flooding, and dangerous record temperatures stealing more of our lives and land each day," Pierce said of Zeldin, nodding to the fires raging in California and calling out his record in Congress.

In addition to opposing money for the national flood insurance program and voting to drastically slash EPA funding, "Zeldin has called for the repeal of standards that protect clean air and clean water," she continued. "Him ascending to a role that would allow him to do polluters' bidding from within the agency tasked with administering and enforcing those protections makes him a threat to us all."

After Zeldin's hearing, Food & Water Watch policy director Jim Walsh said that he "was asked several questions about fossil fuel industry propaganda campaigns, as well as the absurd theories spread by President Trump regarding our environment and the planet. At every turn, Zeldin danced around the questions. It is clear that Zeldin will be a rubber stamp for industry priorities, jeopardizing clean air and water, and driving up costs for everyday families."

This week has featured a flurry of hearings for Trump nominees—including Tuesday events for Fox News host and former Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy, the president-elect's pick to lead the Department of Transportation, and Chris Wright, a fracking CEO and promoter of climate disinformation on track to be the next energy secretary.

Duffy and Wright have provoked intense criticism from climate groups—including members of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, who held a protest at Wright's hearing during which 10 campaigners were arrested.

"Zeldin, Burgum, and Wright are unqualified to serve in these critical environmental positions," Allie Rosenbluth, United States program manager at Oil Change International, said last week. "With Zeldin and Burgum each receiving hundreds of thousands in fossil fuel campaign money and Wright's position as a fracking CEO, their loyalties lie with industry profits, not protecting Americans' air, water, climate, and working-class families. These men will choose items off the fossil fuel industry's wishlist over the good of the American people every time."

Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) on Thursday introduced a bill that would ban former oil, gas, and coal executives or lobbyists from multiple federal posts—including EPA administrator and secretaries of energy, the interior, and transportation—for a decade after leaving their private sector jobs.