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Cherry on top? He seems to be a bigot as well. Yay!
Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, whom President-elect Donald Trump put forward Friday as his choice for attorney general, has questioned mainstream science on man-made climate change and attacked U.S. EPA for regulatory outreach.
It’s a sign, activists say, that he would likely back Trump’s promises to roll back President Obama’s climate policies.
The Department of Justice is not as high-profile on climate issues as EPA. But Sessions, if confirmed, could shape how the Trump administration defends and enforces environmental laws. In the Senate, Sessions has been a powerful critic of greenhouse gas regulations, calling the underlying climate science “deliberate misinformation.”
“I don’t know we know enough now to answer this question conclusively either way, but there’s been a lot of exaggeration, there’s been a lot of hype, and people are feeling the crunch already in their electric bills ... in our effort to stop storms that don’t seem to be going down, or to stop temperatures that don’t seem to be rising,” he said in a 2014 Senate floor speech.
A U.S. prosecutor and attorney general in Alabama before being elected to the Senate in 1996, Sessions serves on the Judiciary Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee. Accusations of racism during Sessions’ tenure as a prosecutor derailed a 1986 nomination for a federal judgeship, and he once again faces intense scrutiny from civil rights groups fearful about the protection of minority rights under the Trump administration.
But his views on climate change have also stoked concern among environmentalists, who have previously counted on the Obama administration’s Justice Department to uphold agencies’ climate rules and go after energy companies for wrongdoing.
The League of Conservation Voters gave Sessions a lifetime score of 7 percent. He has received nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry over the course of his Senate career, according to the OpenSecrets.org campaign finance database. He has repeatedly voted in favor of expanding drilling and energy production, a review of his record shows.
Cherry on top? He seems to be a bigot as well. Yay!