[Vision2020] Trump Names Climate Denier Kathleen Hartnett-White to Head White House Environmental Council

[Ted Moffett]

Vimeo Video on the website below indeed reveals the following statement at
about 18:55, as excerpted from this article:

"Six years ago at a forum convened by Americans for Prosperity (AFP)
<https://www.desmogblog.com/americans-for-prosperity>, funded by the Koch
Family Foundations <https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-family-foundations>,
Harnett-White actually even went so far to say <https://vimeo.com/31646143>
that there “there is no environmental crisis—in fact, there’s almost no
major environmental problems.” (starting at about 18:55)."
-------------------------------
https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/10/13/trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-ceq?utm_source=dsb%20newsletter

Trump Names Climate Denier Kathleen Hartnett-White to Head White House
Environmental Council

By Steve Horn <https://www.desmogblog.com/user/steve-horn> • Friday,
October 13, 2017

President Donald Trump <https://www.desmogblog.com/donald-trump>, as first
reported by EnergyWire's Hannah Northey‏
<https://www.eenews.net/staff/Hannah_Northey> on Twitter
<https://twitter.com/HMNorthey/status/918650679538876416> and as stated in
a White House press release
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/10/12/president-donald-j-trump-announces-intent-nominate-personnel-key>,
has named Kathleen Hartnett-White
<https://www.desmogblog.com/kathleen-hartnett-white> to chair the Council
on Environmental Quality (CEQ).

Hartnett-White, as previously reported by DeSmog, is a prominent climate
change denier and former Chairman and Commissioner of the Texas Council on
Environmental Quality (TCEQ) under then-Texas Governor Rick Perry
<https://www.desmogblog.com/rick-perry>. Perry now heads up the U.S.
Department of Energy and is reported to have advocated
<http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-climate-skeptic-job-237172>
for her to run CEQ. She is also an outspoken advocate of hydraulic
fracturing (“fracking”) <https://www.desmogblog.com/fracking-the-future> and
of exporting
<http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/247695-have-faith-in-the-shale-gale>
oil and gas to the global market.

Long seen as the presumptive front-runner
<http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-climate-skeptic-job-237172>
to take the CEQ role, Hartnett-White also worked on President Trump's
presidential campaign on his Economic Advisory Team. And her name was
once floated
to head up
<https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/29/donald-trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-climate-denier-epa>
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well, currently led by Scott
Pruitt <https://www.desmogblog.com/scott-pruitt>.

The head of the CEQ coordinates interagency science, climate, and
environmental policy, and is tasked to oversee things like the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Environmental_Policy_Act> review
process and agencies' compliance with that law. The CEQ as an entity itself
was actually a creation of NEPA, mandated by that law.

Though CEQ oversees the NEPA process, it remains unclear how seriously
Hartnett-White will take the NEPA review process, for decades seen as a
bedrock of U.S. environmental regulation since NEPA became law in 1970.

Hartnett-White has long positioned herself as an opponent of environmental
and climate actions taken by regulatory agencies. She currently works as a
fellow-in-residence at the Texas Public Policy Foundation
<https://www.desmogblog.com/texas-public-policy-foundation>, which receives
funding
<https://www.texasobserver.org/revealed-the-corporations-and-billionaires-that-fund-the-texas-public-policy-foundation/>
from ExxonMobil, the Heartland Institute
<https://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute>, Koch Industries
<https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-industries-inc> and others. White also
helped head up the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Fueling Freedom Project
<https://www.facebook.com/FuelingFreedomProject/>, which had among its stated
goals <https://archive.is/g8bgS> to “explain the forgotten moral case for
fossil fuels” and “end the regulation of CO2 as a pollutant.”

In September 2016 during campaign season, Politico's Morning Energy reported
<http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-energy/2016/09/takeaways-from-the-clean-power-plans-day-in-court-216558>
that Hartnett-White was “among a small group of people who have Donald
Trump’s ear on energy policy.” Hartnett-White and Stephen Moore
<https://www.desmogblog.com/stephen-moore>, who also worked on Trump's
campaign, co-authored a 2016 book titled, *Fueling Freedom: Exposing the
Mad War on Energy*. The book promoted fracking and said the U.S. shale gas
bounty could be worth $50 trillion
<http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/06/08/america-sitting-on-50-trillion-in-oil-and-gas.html>,
a statement which has been called false
<https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/u-s-not-50-trillion-fossil-fuel-resources/>
by an energy analyst who crunched the numbers.

The book also claimed that all of the net jobs gained in the U.S. between
2007-2012 can be linked to the fracking revolution, which they wrote has
spawned “millions of new jobs in the energy sector.”

But according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, during that time
period, the number of oil and gas industry workers
<https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021100001?data_tool=XGtable> ranged
from a low of about 140,700 jobs in 2007 to a high of 194,700 in 2012.
Hartnett-White Is a Climate Science Denier

Not only a fracking promoter, Hartnett-White has also called carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere a major benefit for society.

“No matter how many times, the President [Obama], EPA and the media rant
about 'dirty carbon pollution,' there is no pollution about carbon itself!
As a dictionary will tell you, carbon is the chemical basis of all life,” White
wrote in September 2015
<https://townhall.com/columnists/kathleenhartnettwhite/2015/09/29/clearing-the-air-on-climate-change-n2058517>
.

“Our flesh, blood and bones are built of carbon. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is
the gas of life on this planet, an essential nutrient for plant growth on
which human life depends. How craftily our government has masked these
fundamental realities and the environmental benefits of fossil fuels!”

Likewise, Hartnett-White gave a talk for the Texas Public Policy Foundation
in November 2015 on a panel titled, “Not a Pollutant: CO2 is the Gas of Life
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLLF4kBvOHH68jcsuPmA49KQgMQ8Tyx1wb&time_continue=119&v=i9Is3zisv18>
.”

In a September 2016 interview with Politico, Hartnett-White advocated for
the creation of a ”blue ribbon commission
<http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/donald-trump-kathleen-hartnett-white-climate-skeptic-job-237172>”
on climate change, similar to the “red team-blue team
<https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060056858>” one being floated by Pruitt's
EPA. The commission, Hartnett-White told Politico, would create an
“alternative scientific methodology” to the one used by the United Nations'
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She has also stated on
the record that the UN has “revealed themselves
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXgebG5uXgk>” as advocating for communism.

Six years ago at a forum convened by Americans for Prosperity (AFP)
<https://www.desmogblog.com/americans-for-prosperity>, funded by the Koch
Family Foundations <https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-family-foundations>,
Harnett-White actually even went so far to say <https://vimeo.com/31646143>
that there “there is no environmental crisis—in fact, there’s almost no
major environmental problems.” (starting at about 18:55).

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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