President-elect Donald Trump's plan to name ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for secretary of state immediately came under fire Saturday by environmental groups, who said he would work against climate change and related issues.
"Just when we thought Trump’s Cabinet could not get farther away from the needs of the American people, he sneaks in a Saturday appointment," said Greenpeace spokesperson Cassady Craighill, The Hill reports.
"In this position, Tillerson will try his hardest to silence global initiatives and the right of state attorney generals to hold fossil fuel companies legally accountable for climate change," she added in a statement.
"We will not silenced, and we will not allow this Cabinet of billionaires to steamroll the people."
Billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer, who backed Democrat Hillary Clinton, told the Hill that Tillerson's nomination "completes the takeover of our democracy by big oil, Wall Street and the far right.
"Mr. Tillerson manages to embody them all," Steyer, president of NextGen Climate, said in urging the Senate to fight any nomination.
NBC News reported that Tillerson, 64, who headed the world's biggest oil producer since 2006, would be nominated to the post by Trump.
Trump defended his planned choice to Chris Wallace on Fox News in an interview to be aired Sunday, saying that Tillerson was a "world-class player."
Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, ripped Tillerson as a "top fossil-fuel tycoon" — adding that he was "shocked but not surprised" at Trump's plans.
"At a time when the climate crisis is deepening, both the United States and the world deserve much better than having one of the planet’s top fossil-fuel tycoons run U.S. foreign policy," he said.
Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, also said that senators should oppose the nomination.
"Rex Tillerson should be prosecuted for the climate fraud and lying that Exxon Mobil has commenced over the years, not nominated as secretary of state," he said.
May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, an environmental group that has ripped ExxonMobil on climate issues, said that "we can’t let Trump put the world’s largest oil company in charge of our international climate policy."
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