by Robin Bravender
E&E News reporter
The Trump transition team has filled out the ranks of its energy and environmental agency landing teams with fierce critics of major climate regulations.
After a slow start in getting transition teams up and running inside energy and environmental agencies, the transition announced a slew of new team members yesterday for U.S. EPA and new additions for the Interior and Energy department operations. In what’s likely due in part to the Trump team’s lobbying restrictions, they draw heavily from conservative think tanks…
One prominent new name for the EPA team is David Schnare, general counsel at a conservative legal organization who has been a thorn in the sides of environmentalists and the Obama administration.
At the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, Schnare has accused the Obama administration of colluding with green groups to set policy and is known for using public records laws to seek information from climate scientists and government officials. Schnare was a former longtime EPA employee and served as an attorney in the agency’s enforcement office.
He said in a 2015 policy forum that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is “problematic in that it costs so much money.”
Schnare has also declared himself a climate change skeptic. “The science is still out,” he said during that forum. “I’m a Ph.D. scientist, and people say, ‘Well, you’re a skeptic.’ And my answer is, ‘Well, all scientists are skeptics.'”
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