The Constitution forbids states from banning all religion from public spaces and from making churches the ghettos of religion where all manifestations of faith are kept separate from public life. Religious people have an equal right to participate in the public square and to have their contributions to Oklahoma history and society recognized.
— Scott Pruitt
The Constitutional framework of checks and balances matters.
As Oklahoma attorney general, it is not my job to formulate or implement Oklahoma's plan, but it is my job to preserve Oklahoma's right to do so - particularly when the Clean Air Act so clearly recognizes that Oklahomans, and not federal bureaucrats, are best situated to determine Oklahoma energy and environmental policies.
Conservatives deserve a consistent and thoughtful vision for the role of federal government in relationship to states.
My job is to enforce the laws as passed by whom? Congress. They give me my authority. That's the jurisdictional responsibilities that I have, and when litigation is used to regulate... that's abusive. That's wrong.
The whole purpose of CAFE standards is to make cars more efficient that people are actually buying.
We're saying environmental stewardship and jobs in the economy. We can do both together.
I know what it means to prosecute people.
Threats I have faced are unprecedented.
We know humans have most flourished during times of what? Warming trends. So I think there's assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018?
For someone to say that someone's a skeptic or a climate denier about the climate changing, that's just nonsensical. We see that throughout history. We impact the climate by our activity. How much so is very difficult to determine with respect to our CO2 or carbon footprint, but we obviously do.
The greatest threat we've had to economic growth has been that those in industry don't know what is expected of them. Rules come that are outside of statutes. Rules get changed midway. It creates vast uncertainty and paralysis, and re-establishing a vigorous commitment to rule of law is going to help a lot.
The 'environmental left' tells us that, though we have natural resources like natural gas and oil and coal, and though we can feed the world, we should keep those things in the ground, put up fences, and be about prohibition.
What I've said about consent orders and consent decrees is that we shouldn't regulate through litigation.
It's unwise in business to have one client or two clients. It's unwise in electricity to have one source or two sources.
We can be pro-growth, pro-jobs, and pro-environment.
What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2.
Facts are facts, and fiction is fiction, and a lie doesn't become truth just because it appears on the front page of the newspaper.
Oklahomans care about the environment and the state in which we live.
When an American government takes on characteristics that elevate the state above the individual, it must be vigorously opposed as a form of, or step toward, tyranny.
When you look at farmers and ranchers, for example, they are our first environmentalists. They are our first conservationists. When you look at the greatest asset that they have, it is their land. They care about the water that they drink. They care about the air that they breathe. We should see them as partners, not adversaries.
We, as a country, have always used innovative technology to advance environmental stewardship, reduction of those pollutants, but also grown our economy at the same time.
I happen to think the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, or the Paris Agreement, if you will, should have been treated as a treaty, should have gone through Senate confirmation.
This notion that we cannot be about jobs and stewardship of the environment is just simply not right. We've always done that well as a country. We haven't had to choose.
The federal government should not be able to hide behind sovereign immunity when the facts don't meet the protections.
The climate is changing. That's not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?
When you declare a 'war on coal' from a regulatory perspective, the question has to be asked: where's that in the statute? Where did Congress empower the EPA to declare a war on coal?
I spent a couple years just earnestly praying, asking the question that I don't think we ask enough: 'God what do you want to do with me?' Really getting into our prayer closet, seeking His heart, asking what He wants to do in our lives.
Think about how tangible it would be to the citizens of Washington State to finally have the Hanford nuclear site cleaned up. Think about how tangible it would be to the citizens along the Hudson River to fix that pollution. These are some of the most direct things we can do to benefit our environment.
The biblical world view with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we've been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind.
This paradigm that says we have to choose industry over the environment or the environment over industry is the old way of thinking.
We need fuel diversity as far as the generation of electricity because you can only get so much natural gas through the pipelines.
I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.
Agencies and the executive branch need to enforce the law. They don't need to fill in the spaces if Congress doesn't act.
If the president is allowed to govern by executive action, then the rule of law greatly suffers.
'Sue and settle' involves the creation of environmental rules and regulations through lawsuits filed by environmental groups against the EPA, not through Congress or proper rule-making.
Our battles against the EPA and other rogue federal agencies aren't about a desire for dirtier air or zero regulation. They are about our right as a state to control our own destiny and resist attempts by the administration to ramrod a wish list of regulations through agency heads instead of garnering approval from Congress.
As we do our work in D.C., we should do our work in collaboration and in partnership, in cohesion with states so that we can work on environmental issues from Superfund to air quality to water quality across the full spectrum in things that we do in partnership with those folks.
Federalism is not one state dictating to the rest of the country what should occur in the area of CAFE.
This idea that if you're pro-environment you're anti-energy is just something we've got to change, so that attitude is something we're working on very much.
I've led a grand jury.
We just need to make sure that we get somebody in there that respects the Constitution, respects the rule of law, that restores the proper balance between the states and federal government. I have great confidence Jeb Bush would do that.
There are very important questions around the climate issue that folks really don't get to. And that's one of the reasons why I've talked about having an honest, open, transparent debate about what do we know, what don't we know, so the American people can be informed and they can make decisions on their own with respect to these issues.
Truly and clearly, the climate changes.
Most lawsuits against the EPA historically have come either because of the agency's lack of regard for a statute or because the EPA failed in an obligation or deadline.
We've made extraordinary progress on the environment over the decades, and that's something we should celebrate.
Ozone is something that we most definitely have to regulate. It's a very important thing to regulate.
I'm going to have a very thoughtful and meaningful enforcement response to Superfund to make sure that we are achieving good outcomes for citizens across the country with respect to that entire portfolio of 1,336 or so sites.
My kids are wonderfully talented individuals, and their world view is wonderful.
EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford - while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars.
