President-elect Donald Trump will nominate a man described as "the puppet of polluters" to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
Trump will nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a critic of federal environmental regulation, to lead the EPA, his transition team says.
"For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent taxpayer dollars on an out-of-control anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs, while also undermining our incredible farmers and many other businesses and industries at every turn," Trump is quoted as saying in the statement.
Green groups have denounced Pruitt as a puppet of polluters, with the environmental organisation the Sierra Club likening his selection as EPA administrator to "putting an arsonist in charge of fighting fires."
Representatives of the nation's mining and oil interests have cheered Trump's choice.
Though his academic degrees are in political science and law, Pruitt has been a vocal public denier of the science showing that the Earth is warming and that man-made carbon emissions are to blame.
In an opinion article published earlier this year by National Review, Pruitt suggested that the debate over global warming "is far from settled" and claimed "scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind."
