My local fish-wrap has little to recommend it, but every now and then they hit a home run. This satirical commentary really nailed it!
by Theodore Decker, Columbus Dispatch, 11/2/17
________________________________________
From the desk of Administrator Scott Pruitt
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
Dear Staff:
You may have noticed that my plan to retool the EPA’s key science advisory boards has drawn some heat. These continued attacks on my supposed disregard for the environment are patent falsehoods perpetuated by environmentalists with extremist agendas.
Given the persistence of these hippies, I felt the need to address their latest gripe with the several dozen of you still on the payroll here at the EPA.
Rest assured that the environment and I go way back, to my days as Oklahoma’s attorney general when, in an outpouring of tough love, I repeatedly sued this very agency and relentlessly advanced the agendas of the energy tycoons who funded my campaigns.
My “green” thinking extends even to this very memo. With so many positions at the EPA going unfilled, and disgruntled employees leaving to write apocalyptic fiction about climate change or whatever it is their wild imaginations concoct next, there is a need for fewer copies of interoffice correspondence, which of course saves trees.
To further this tree-saving agenda, I request that those of you who receive a copy share it with four or five co-workers. For example, while the five staffers remaining in the Office of Air and Radiation have been given one copy, the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention is asked to share its copy with the Office of Land and Emergency Management, and also with the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, where Steve will probably appreciate the company. He doesn’t get out much anymore.
The most recent criticism is directed at my decision to prohibit researchers who are receiving EPA grant money from serving on various EPA advisory boards. As I explained to reporters without irony on Tuesday, “It is very important to ensure independence, to ensure that we’re getting advice and counsel independent of the EPA.”
The problem with these science advisory groups is they have too many scientists.
These scientists are the same brainy know-it-alls to whom you and I administered swirlies back in middle school. It was awesome.
Now they disappear into their labs full of thingamabobs and fritter away years on pointless tasks such as research, data collection and peer review. Because none of that makes any money, they conspire to throw together some alarmist propaganda that ensures them another grant.
My vision is to replace such fringe radicals with government types and experts who don’t have to rely upon EPA research grants because they are bought and paid for by the industries who go out there each and every day and kick Mother Nature square in her behind. Who better to chart the course of the EPA than those who extract their personal wealth from the natural world?
I know that, in your role as EPA employees, you often encounter someone forcing the false narrative that the world is a complex and fragile place. When this happens to me, I have a retort ready.
Oh yeah? I ask. Then how do you explain volcanoes?
This never fails to leave them speechless.
Plant and animal species come and go all the time, and the world keeps on turnin’. We all know that flamingos went extinct, but does anyone even really miss them?
All of this is a matter of perspective. From a certain point of view, the grass now growing on the Love Canal is a lovely shade of green.
So if someone tries to argue with you that smog is bad, just do what I do and reply that smog is a natural byproduct of capitalism. I call it “sky honey.”
Speaking of honey, I remember hearing from the gang at the USDA that honeybees are not in danger of extinction.
Don’t tell those bozos at Fish & Wildlife, but we at the EPA need to do something about that. Can’t stand the things. I’m allergic.
Love,
Scott
No comments:
Post a Comment