Democrats and environmentalists seem to be competing to describe just how bad of a choice former Trump appointee and coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler would be as Virginia secretary of natural resources.

“Wheeler is one of the worst people the Governor-elect could have chosen,” wrote Rep. Don Beyer (D), on Twitter.

“Andrew Wheeler would be a great pick if this was 2020 BC — when folks believed the earth was flat,” wrote Susan Swecker, chair of the Virginia Democratic Party. “But not in 2022 and not for Va.!”

Andrew Wheeler was President Trump’s second administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, running the agency from 2019 through 2021, after the departure of Scott Pruitt, who left facing numerous ethics investigations and scandals. On Wednesday, Virginia Gov.-Elect Glenn Youngkin announced Wheeler was his pick to lead the commonwealth’s department of natural resources.

“Virginia needs a diverse energy portfolio in place to fuel our economic growth, continued preservation of our natural resources, and a comprehensive plan to tackle rising sea levels,” Youngkin said in a statement announcing the nomination.

While some credited Wheeler with bringing stability to the EPA after Pruitt’s chaotic reign, many others decried his rollback of environmental regulations. He weakened vehicle emissions standards and clean power regulations, and rolled back clean water protections. He also downplayed the impact of climate change, saying in 2019 that any danger from global warming was “50 to 75 years out,” and less urgent than other priorities, such as safe drinking water.

(In 2021, 4 in 10 Americans lived in counties hit by climate-related disasters, according to a recent Washington Post analysis.)

“Under Wheeler, Virginia’s environment will get worse. There is no other way to describe it,” said Tim Cywinski with the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club.

Cywinski said Wheeler’s tenure at the EPA is a sign of what is to come in Virginia. “Instead of using actual protection powers, he rolled back safeguards that are meant to protect our water and our air. He worked tirelessly to remove policies in place that upheld principles of environmental justice.”

Former EPA staffers spoke out against Wheeler too; 158 former agency employees, including many high ranking ones, signed a letter urging the General Assembly to reject him. In the four-page letter, the authors enumerate many of the actions they say Wheeler undertook to undermine federal environmental protections and science. “As you consider Mr. Wheeler’s record, there should be little doubt that he will bring his extremist approach and polluter favoritism to Virginia. His playbook will be the same, putting at greater risk the health and welfare of the citizens of the Commonwealth and the environment in which they reside.”

The authors also note that during Wheeler’s tenure, the Trump administration proposed slashing funding for the Chesapeake Bay by 90%.

State Sen. Scott Surovell (D) said he was baffled by the choice of Wheeler. “Youngkin campaigned as a sort of a consensus-building-friendly moderate, and he tried to downplay anything related to Donald Trump. Then to pick one of the people in the Trump administration that’s most deeply identified with Trump and Trump’s policies and Trump’s hostility towards environmental protection — it was just really kind of dumbfounding to me.”

Surovell noted that Wheeler may face a tough confirmation in the General Assembly, where Democrats still control the senate.

Several GOP lawmakers did not immediately respond to WAMU/DCist request for comment.

Surovell said that Virginia had made “a ton of progress” on environment and climate policy. “In the last two years, we’ve gone from being one of the worst states in the country to one of the best, and being a leader. Putting somebody like this in charge of our environmental program would just be a disaster.”

In recent years, Virginia lawmakers passed the Clean Economy Act, creating for the first time a renewable energy mandate in the state, requiring 100% clean electricity by 2045. This was a first among Southern states.

Virginia also joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, a regional cap-and-trade program to cut carbon emissions from power plants.

Youngkin has said he will pull out of RGGI, and he does not support the Clean Economy Act.

Since departing the EPA, Wheeler, a Fairfax County resident, has been busy as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, writing opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal, and testifying against plastic bag fees.

Youngkin also announced his pick for director of environmental quality, engineer and wetland scientist Mike Rolband. Rolband, who founded the consulting firm Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc. (WSSI), did not spark the same sort of outcry as Wheeler.

This story was updated to add information about the letter from EPA staffers.