EPA/NOMINATIONS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “One of President Donald Trump’s top environmental nominees is withdrawing after a year of criticism for being skeptical about climate change and for calling global warming a ‘kind of paganism.’
Kathleen Hartnett White, Mr. Trump’s choice to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality, asked to withdraw this weekend. She cited a nomination process that had dragged on for more than a year, and said she would continue to support the president’s agenda on the environment and energy.
Once considered a top contender to run the Environmental Protection Agency, Ms. Hartnett White ended up encountering some of the toughest opposition from Democrats in the Senate for an oversight role ensuring federal agencies are meeting environmental obligations. Critics viewed her environmental positions as extreme, even for an administration with several nominees who have questioned humans’ influence on climate change or previously worked at fossil-fuel companies or lobbying for them.
Ms. Hartnett White is a fellow at the conservative, free-market think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation and was previously chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Her work at the foundation rejected the idea of carbon as a pollutant that worsens global warming and instead celebrated the fossil-fuel industry for pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, saying that helps plants grow…
She was one of dozens of nominees in limbo since Congress returned nearly 100 nominees to the White House late last year.”
-Timothy Puko, “White House Pulls Controversial Pick to Lead Council on Environmental Quality,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 4, 2018 04:05pm