Experience working with six EPA admins tells me Scott Pruitt is a breathtakingly wrong-headed choice.

This post first appeared on Forbes.

On the eve of Senate confirmation hearings for Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency, companies and associations that oppose pollution limits have been hoping for quick confirmation of a man who brags about being “a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.”

But the tide may be turning against Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, because reporting by the New York Times and others has exposed that his campaign to roll back bedrock environmental safeguards has been orchestrated and bankrolled by some of the worst elements of the fossil fuel industry.

The facts are damning: Pruitt has sued 14 times to block EPA clean air and water protections, and in every suit except one his co-litigators were some of the biggest polluters in the nation—and they also made cash contributions to Pruitt’s political causes. These companies and associations stand to gain the most by blocking basic clean air and clean water protections. And communities across the country stand to lose the most.

As a result, moderate voices in the Senate are now questioning whether Pruitt is fit to run the agency he has worked so hard to cripple. Over the weekend, in response to yet another expose about Pruitt putting corporate interests over the public’s, Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) tweeted that the story “demonstrates why I have substantial concerns about Pruitt EPA nomination.”

I share the Senator’s deep concerns.

I’ve had the honor and privilege of working for six different EPA administrators, almost all of them Republicans.

I’ve seen first-hand what it takes to be a good—even great—administrator.

And those years of experience tell me that Scott Pruitt is a breathtakingly wrong-headed choice.

What makes an EPA administrator effective? The first criterion is simple and obvious: a deep commitment to protecting human health and the environment. Most past administrators, both Democrats and Republicans, have shared this commitment, yielding dramatic improvements in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the environment we all share.

But much more work lies ahead. More than half of all Americans still breathe in unhealthy levels of particulate matter and ozone. Flint is just one of many cities where children are being harmed by unacceptable levels of lead in tap water. And countless communities face local pollution problems. In South Florida, for instance, “we had this literally toxic water coming into our waterways and the EPA was not raising hell about this,” new Congressman Brian Mast (R-FL) recently told NPR. “We need to see the EPA certainly do a better job.”

Second, it’s crucial that the EPA head understands that protecting the environment and public health is not at odds with a growing, prosperous economy. Many politicians, including President-elect Donald Trump, have painted EPA regulations as business-crushing and job-killing. But nothing could be further from the truth. In case after case, from taking lead out of gasoline to cleaning up rivers and lakes, the same rules that make us safer and healthier also unleash technological innovation and investment that open up new markets, create jobs, and boost companies’ bottom lines.

To my great frustration, the environmental community has not yet succeeded in exposing the false choice between environmental and economic progress. But the best EPA administrators have been up to the challenge of skillfully and courageously working with all parties to find solutions that work for both public health and business.

Remember the scare over the ozone hole? Scientists discovered in the 1970s that Freon and other chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerators and air conditioners were eating away the stratospheric layer of ozone that protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation. It was obvious that CFCs had to go. The industry, of course, trotted out the same tired arguments that have been used to fight virtually every proposed regulation in modern history: The science is too uncertain, the technology isn’t ready, taking action would cripple the economy.

But the EPA Administrator at the time, Lee Thomas, worked with the chemical industry and regulatory skeptics in the Reagan White House to shape a CFC phase-out. In 1987, President Reagan signed the now famous Montreal Protocol, banning CFCs and saving the ozone layer.

“Businesses soon adjusted to the new rules and identified opportunities for new products,” Thomas later recalled. “More than a decade of economic prosperity followed the signing of the treaty, showing that American ingenuity can go a long way toward solving our nation’s challenges.”

Pruitt, sadly, hasn’t gotten that message.

Despite mountains of evidence for major economic benefits and market opportunities that emerge from renewable energy policies, clean water rules, and other crucial health and pollution standards, he’s still hopelessly wedded to the old false narrative that environmental protections are “job-killers.”

And his idea of working with business? As the New York Times discovered, a letter he sent to the EPA accusing regulators of grossly overestimating air pollution from natural gas drilling in Oklahoma was actually written by “lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.”

In stark contrast, Scott Pruitt doesn’t seem to care much for science. In an open letter to Congress, his supporters praised him for understanding that the science underlying EPA’s actions must be “rooted in religious worldviews.” And where was Pruitt when his own state was being shaken by hundreds of unprecedented earthquakes, which scientists linked to the injection of wastewater from oil and gas drilling? Instead of protecting his own citizens, who were forced to take matters into their own hands by suing the guilty oil companies, Pruitt was busy filing those lawsuits against EPA trying to strip away protections for everyone else against harmful levels of mercury, water pollution, and other hazards. In the absence of action by Attorney General Pruitt, the state’s public utility commission had to step in with common sense limits on wastewater injection, which quickly reduced the number of earthquakes with little impact on drilling.

At a time when so much more work still lies ahead, we need an EPA Administrator who has the courage and persuasiveness to chart a path that follows the science, protects the environment, and makes Americans safer, healthier, and more prosperous. It can be done. I’ve been proud of my own work helping to improve both water quality and local economies, and of the efforts of past Administrators like Thomas and Reilly.

But it won’t happen under Scott Pruitt, who may be the worst choice for EPA Administrator—ever. We need to make every effort to block his confirmation. If that fails, the battle will turn to the courts—and the court of public opinion. This is a battle we cannot afford to lose.