EPA chief unconvinced of CO2 link to global warming

WASHINGTON - The new head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday he is not convinced that carbon dioxide from human activity is the main driver of climate change and said he wants Congress to weigh in on whether CO2 is a harmful pollutant that should be regulated.

In an interview with CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt also said the Trump administration will make an announcement on fuel efficiency standards for cars 'very soon,” stressing that he and President Donald Trump believe current standards were rushed through.

Pruitt is a climate-change denier who sued the agency he now leads more than a dozen times as Oklahoma's attorney general. He said he was not convinced that carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal is the main cause of climate change, a conclusion widely embraced by scientists.

'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,” he told CNBC.

'So no, I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” Pruitt said. 'But we don't know that yet, we need to continue to debate, continue the review and analysis.”

Trump campaigned on a promise to roll back environmental regulations ushered in by President Barack Obama, including those aimed at combating climate change. He framed his stand as aimed at boosting businesses, including the oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries.

Scientists immediately criticized Pruitt's statement, saying it ignores a large body of evidence collected over decades that shows fossil fuel burning as the main factor in climate change

The Supreme Court unleashed a fury of regulation and litigation when it ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases are an air pollutant that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Two years later, the EPA declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants.