The New York Times reports that Scott Pruitt, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is rapidly filling up the agency with fellow conservatives devoted to destroying the environment.

To friends and critics, Mr. Pruitt seems intent on building an E.P.A. leadership that is fundamentally at odds with the career officials, scientists and employees who carry out the agency’s missions. That might be a recipe for strife and gridlock at the federal agency tasked to keep safe the nation’s clean air and water while safeguarding the planet’s future.

“He’s the most different kind of E.P.A. administrator that’s ever been,” said Steve J. Milloy, a member of the E.P.A. transition team who runs the website JunkScience.com, which aims to debunk climate change. “He’s not coming in thinking E.P.A. is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Quite the opposite.”

Gina McCarthy, who headed the E.P.A. under former President Barack Obama, said she too saw Mr. Pruitt as unique. “It’s fine to have differing opinions on how to meet the mission of the agency. Many Republican administrators have had that,” she said. “But here, for the first time, I see someone who has no commitment to the mission of the agency.”

Top positions are going to Trump campaign staffers who are climate change skeptics.

They too will have to breathe the same polluted air as the rest of us. Will there be special gas masks for the rich? Will we wear filters over our faces to screen out pollution? Should we stop eating fish because the waters are polluted?

This is not a normal administration. The agency created by Richard Nixon in 1970 to protect the environment is now controlled by troglodytes who want to end the protection of the environment.