April 2, 2014 — Scott Pruitt is Oklahoma's attorney general and he's fed up with Big Green's outrageously destructive sue-and-settle attacks using endangered species as a weapon to obliterate America's burgeoning oil and gas production.
Pruitt was so fed up that on March 17 he and a coalition of energy groups filed a pioneering lawsuit – The State of Oklahoma et al. v. U.S. Department of the Interior – for collusion in violating federal law.
“Sue and settle” is the polite way to say that federal agency greenies invite old friends in Big Green groups to sue the agency so they can jointly select a species in, for example, oil and gas country, and go to court to “force” it to be listed as “endangered” or “threatened” so its range can be declared untouchable “critical habitat,” which stops production there.
In time of war that would be called sabotage. In time of Obama it’s called business as usual.
I asked Pruitt by email what it was in particular about sue-and-settle tactics that sparked Oklahoma's lawsuit. He told me, “That's what the Fish and Wildlife Service did in 2011 when it agreed to arbitrary and aggressive timelines on deciding the listing status of the lesser prairie chicken to settle a lawsuit from an environmental group.
“A ‘threatened’ listing would restrict land use in the bird’s five-state habitat that includes Oklahoma.”
The wide-ranging lesser prairie chicken had allegedly been deliberately selected by WildEarth Guardians and at least two FWS bureaucrats for maximum damage to resource production – the implicated two are among the named defendants in Oklahoma’s 47-page filing papers.
WildEarth Guardians was the former employer of “crucify them” Al Armendariz, the Environmental Protection Agency official who was removed after his abuses of energy producers came to light.
Pruitt was more than blunt in his email: “The decision on the lesser prairie chicken appears to be less about sound science and saving endangered species, and more about federal agencies partnering with like-minded environmental groups to thwart development and destroy private property rights. This scheme undermines the rule of law and Congressional authority. My office will vigorously pursue our challenge of the FWS and other federal agencies that engage in 'sue and settle' tactics."
Read the full opinion piece at the Washington Examiner