Young Person Confronts Pruitt On Climate Silence: “You’re Betraying Our Futures”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 19, 2017
New York, NY — Today, at the Concordia Summit in New York City, Daniela Lapidous, a young woman and member of Sunrise NYC, confronted EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt about his connections to the fossil fuel industry and his unraveling of environmental and climate policy. He refused to address or answer her questions, and instead attempted to portray himself as the reasonable man in the room.
The video can be found here.
After being forcefully escorted out by security, Daniela Lapidous issued the following statement:
“I stood up to call out EPA administrator Scott Pruitt because he has called talking about climate change ‘insensitive’ in the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma — but what’s truly ‘insensitive’ is watching people lose their lives and livelihoods to disaster after disaster, and continuing to put interests of fossil fuel executives over the interests of the public. Pruitt has made a career out of attacking the EPA, and is now working to destroy its ability to regulate fossil fuel emissions as its head. I wonder if his climate silence has anything to do with the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has taken from the fossil fuel industry, or the millions of dollars the Koch brothers spent getting him appointed to EPA administrator?
“Security escorted me out of the conference because they perceived me as a ‘threat.’ Why am I, a young woman who will have to live through a future of extreme weather that Pruitt refuses to face, a threat? He is endangering clean air, clean water, and healthy and safe lives for all Americans. Pruitt is the real threat. It’s shocking that a man who continues to knowingly deceive the American people about the threat of climate change was invited to this conference in the first place.”
The Sunrise movement is building an army of young people to end the corruption of fossil fuel executives on our politics and elect leaders who stand up for the health and wellbeing of all people. We’ll continue to expose the actions of puppets like Pruitt at every turn, and are aiming to make stopping climate change and creating renewable energy jobs a decisive issue in the 2018 midterm elections. Learn more at: sunrisemovement.org
###
