The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been one of the most runaway agencies in the federal government. It has used regulations to impose the will of its bureaucracy and been insensitive to the needs of people to earn a living and oblivious of its own mistakes (see: Animas River spill).

So reports that President-elect Donald Trump is picking Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, who has sued the EPA a number of times, to head the agency, is creating havoc in the EPA dovecote. The Washington Post reports:

Pruitt, who has written that the debate on climate change is “far from settled,” joined a coalition of state attorneys general in suing the agency’s Clean Power Plan, the principal Obama-era policy aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector. He has also sued, with fellow state attorneys general, over the EPA’s recently announced regulations seeking to curtail the emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas sector.

On his Linked In page, Pruitt boasts of being “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”…

Pruitt, along with Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, came to the defense of ExxonMobil when it fell under investigation by attorneys general from more liberal states seeking information about whether the oil giant failed to disclose material information about climate change.

“We do not doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of our fellow attorneys general about climate change and the role human activity plays in it,” they wrote at the conservative publication National Review. “But we call upon them to press those beliefs through debate, not through governmental intimidation of those who disagree with them.”

Americans by and large want to protect the environment, but the EPA has moved far beyond conservancy to a radical agenda. In naming Pruitt, Trump cited the agency's "anti-energy agenda."

If Pruitt moves forward with a sensible energy and environmental policy, the bureaucrats at the EPA will be feeling like–er–fossils in no time at all.

Hat tip: Hot Air

This Just In: The Wall Street Journal weighs in on the selection of Pruitt in an editorial headlined "A Lawyer for a Lawless EPA."