To the editor:
My life’s work has been teaching undergraduate college students how to make scientifically informed decisions in the voting booth. In contrast to my goals are the actions of our Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, Scott Pruitt. He purged scientists from the EPA, replacing them with energy industry lobbyists and political cronies from Oklahoma. This is leading to policies that favor industry profits over our children’s health. He deleted scientific data on climate change from the agency’s website, and publicly questions well-established science about human-caused climate change.
The Environmental Protection Agency was founded in 1970 by Republican President Richard Nixon to protect America’s natural treasures. Pruitt’s attempts to ignore and eradicate science from the work of this agency are frightening. Instead of protecting the environment, Scott Pruitt is busy rolling back more protections than any EPA administrator before him and routinely ignoring scientific evidence at the same time he racks up a string of serious and costly ethics violations including improper use of taxpayer money for personal expenses.
Policymakers at all levels, including Maine lawmakers, rely on facts, data and research from the EPA to make sound policy decisions. Scott Pruitt’s dismissal of science jeopardizes our ability to create and implement important protections for our health and environment.
We need an EPA administrator who respects science. More than 170 members of Congress, including Maine’s Representative Chellie Pingree, have called for Pruitt to resign immediately or be fired. I urge the rest of Maine’s congressional delegation to do the same.
Dr. Bonnie S. Wood
Professor Emerita of Biology
University of Maine at Presque Isle
