US judge rules that Pruitt must justify his climate change claims

Well, this could be interesting. A US District Court judge for the District of Columbia has ruled that Scott Pruitt and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has to publicly justify Pruitt's claims that carbon dioxide is not proven to be a major contributor to climate change.

Back in March 2017, Pruitt made the statement that "I would not agree that [carbon dioxide is] a primary contributor to the global warming that we see". This of course flies in the face of previous EPA statements (not to mention generally agreed scientific opinion), and so an organization called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any agency documents that Pruitt used to come to this apparently radical opinion. The EPA stalled and stalled and so the employee group sued them for the information. The EPA stalled some more, but the District Court finally ruled that the EPA must provide the requested information by July 2nd at the latest.

Now, clearly there will be no EPA documents suggesting such a conclusion. So, what happens then? A public retraction? Pruitt's dismissal? Absolutely nothing? As so often in the Trump administration, we are breaking new ground here, and no-one really knows what will happen. But kudos to PEER for sticking to their guns and not backing down.