EPA’s Scott Pruitt: Carbon dioxide not to blame for global warming

“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, so no, I would not agree that [carbon dioxide] is a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

His statement comes as President Trump is expected to issue an executive order within the next week that sets in motion the repeal of EPA’s Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of former President Barack Obama’s climate change agenda. The EPA plan seeks to cut carbon pollution by one-third by 2030. Pruitt, as former Oklahoma attorney general, help lead a 28-state lawsuit against the EPA plan, which was consequently halted by the Supreme Court last year.

But Pruitt’s views are at odds with other parts of the government, most prominently the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, which said in January that 2016 was the warmest year on record as a result of increased carbon dioxide emissions from human activities and other greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse gas emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the most abundant, is blamed by many scientists for contributing to a rise in the global average temperature of the Earth.

But Pruitt said “we don’t know that yet,” and the issue is up for “debate” and continued “review and the analysis.”

He also said that he would like to see Congress take up the EPA’s 2009 determination that carbon pollution, with other greenhouse gases, are a threat to public health. The determination came after the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling that the EPA can regulate carbon pollution from vehicles and its later ruling for other sources of pollution.

Pruitt also said he was at odds with the Paris climate change agreement that the U.S. signed onto in 2015 with nearly 200 countries. He called it a “bad deal.”