There's
a case to be made that the Trump Administration's rollback of environmental
regulation won't be devastating; that market forces will prevail in the coming
energy revolution; that the environment and public health will continue to be
protected under the EPA and other agencies, and that state governments will do
their part as well; and that a newly-elected President, self-branded as an
astute businessman and dealmaker, will be open to the wisdom of ensuring a safe
and healthy America.
But
there are two fatal flaws with this argument: 1) You weren't born yesterday;
and 2) You don't come to this page to be lied to.
The
Trump Administration’s cabinet nominees and transition staff are a wall-to-wall
collection of zealots, ideologues and latter-day Robber Barons. Their
collective message, both stated and implied, is that the American government’s
ability to protect the environment, already besieged and underfunded, is on the
brink of oblivion.
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| For more cartoons by Red Rall, CLICK HERE |
Upon
exiting, Gore told the press gaggle that meeting with the Trumps was “extremely
interesting.”
Combined with Trump’s declaration to the New York Times that he had an “open mind” about climate change, the wilted spirits of environmentalists were revived. Kudos to Gore and DiCaprio for making their case, but now, let’s return to climate reality.
Combined with Trump’s declaration to the New York Times that he had an “open mind” about climate change, the wilted spirits of environmentalists were revived. Kudos to Gore and DiCaprio for making their case, but now, let’s return to climate reality.
Environmental
Protection Agency
A
day after Gore’s meeting, Trump announced the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney
General Scott Pruitt to
lead the Environmental Protection Agency. In his six years on the job in
Oklahoma, Pruitt has enjoyed the support of keystone local industries,
including fossil fuel and poultry.
He’s
not let them down, helping to lead a battle—against the agency he’ll be in
charge of if approved—on the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States
definition (WOTUS). WOTUS and the Clean Water Act hold a particular irony,
since the anticipated assaults on Section 404 of
the Clean Water Act could make it easier to drain real, not metaphoric, swamps
from coast to coast.
State
Department
Next
was ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, who vaulted past the likes of Rudy Guiliani
and Gen. David Petraeus for the Secretary of State nomination.
Months
away from Exxon’s mandatory 65 year-old retirement age, Tillerson was a man in
search of a hobby. Tillerson has acknowledged that human-caused climate change
is real, and has endorsed both a carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement.
He’s
an Exxon lifer, with 41 years in the employ of a corporation that’s buried its
own science affirming climate change, and that still funds climate denial
groups. But don’t think he’s inexperienced in government or foreign policy.
Steve Coll’s must-read 2012 book “Private Empire” makes
the compelling case that Exxon functions as a sovereign petro-state, leveraging
diplomatic pressure in virtually every corner of the Earth.
All
told, the CEO of Exxon looks to be the most progressive voice on climate change
in the Trump Administration. The CEO of Exxon. As Elizabeth
Kolbert, the Pulitzer-winning New Yorker writer observed, “You have
to be pretty desperate – and at this point many people are – to take this as
cause for optimism.”
Department
of Energy
Editorial
cartoonists and late-night comics love Rick Perry,
who, as its potential boss, probably now remembers that Department of Energy
was one of those agencies he’d like to abolish.
The
former Texas governor is actually a big fan of wind power, which he watched
become a booming industry in his state. “You can be proud that Texas produces
more energy from wind turbines than all but five countries,” he boasted upon
leaving office in 2015.
He
ruled over a bonanza in Texas fracking as well, and last year joined the Board
of Directors of Energy Transfer Partners, the builders of the Dakota Access
Pipeline.
Perry
has also said that climate science is a conspiracy to keep climate scientists
as wealthy as we all know that they are. While DOE has been home to
groundbreaking clean energy research, the bulk of the department’s mission and
budget goes to maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, and cleaning up
the immense messes left by their manufacture.
Since
leaving the Texas State House, Perry has kept himself busy with an unsuccessful
appearance on “Dancing With the Stars,” and by turning back a criminal
indictment for abuse of power as Governor. Step lightly, Guv.
Interior
Department
Ryan Zinke is
a first-term Montana congressman who accepts that climate change is real. In
the past, he’s called climate change a “threat multiplier,” but that Obama’s
climate strategies would unleash “catastrophic” economic costs.
He
earned a 3 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters in 2015.
Unlike many on the Trump team, he’s voiced opposition for turning federal lands
over to states.
An
avid hunter, Zinke says he’d like to see more intensive use of federal lands by
both sportsmen and oil and gas drillers, and is expected to favor opening
controversial export terminals to ship Montana and Wyoming coal across the Pacific.
He
does have credentials as a “hook and bullet” conservationist, including support
for the crucial Land and Water Conservation Fund. That’s earned him opposition
from western anti-environment groups like the American Land Rights Association.
Justice
Department
If
approved, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions would
serve as Attorney General. He’s said that efforts to bring clean energy to
developing nations would be a veritable assault on the world’s poorest people.
He
believes CO2 is a benign “plant food,” and famously launched a bizarre
interrogation of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy earlier this year.
The
Undercard
Enough
about the energy/environment bosses. The secondary players may be considerably
worse. Many of these items are taken from first-rate reporting by Lyndsey Gilpin
of High Country News, and research by Jenny Rowland and Erin Auel at
the Center for
American Progress. The CAP researchers documented that nearly
every key member of the transition teams for EPA, Interior, and DOE worked for
Koch-funded organizations or office-holders.
Energy
Department
Thomas
Pyle, a former lobbyist for both Koch Industries and the National Petrochemical
and Refiners Association, leads the transition team. He currently runs the
Koch- and Exxon-funded Institute for Energy Research, a think tank that’s
espoused a loosening of energy regulations and climate denial while denouncing
wind energy.
A
special moment came on December 14, when Energy transition team member Anthony
Scaramucci appeared on CNN.
Anthony
Scaramucci, a financial CEO and Fox Business News contributor, mixed it up with
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo in mid-December. Cuomo repeatedly asked his guest about
whether climate change is real.
Citing Flat Earth Theory, Scaramucci took
a deep dive into the manufacture of doubt.
Funny
thing: Scaramucci was asked the same question six months ago and declared
climate science to be “irrefutable.”
For good measure, and possibly with his new boss in mind, he added back in
June, “I find it tragic that so many people in this country believe global
warming is some sort of elaborate hoax perpetuated by every credible scientist
on the planet.”
Other
Energy Department transition officials include two more former Koch Industries
lobbyists, Mike McKenna and
Mike Catanzaro.
Catanzaro also served a stint as Communications
Director for uber-denier Sen. James Inhofe.
Team member William Greene is
Deputy Legislative Director for the Safari Club International, which has
lobbied for trophy-hunting exemptions from the Endangered Species Act.
Transitioner
Daniel Simmons comes from two Koch-funded groups, IER and ALEC.
Somewhere
on this DOE team, an unidentified someone has been “counseled.” Those were the
announced consequences for distributing a questionnaire to DOE employees that,
among other things, sought to identify anyone at the agency who had
participated in climate-related meetings.
After
an uproar, and a refusal by current DOE staff to comply, the Trump team
disowned the questionnaire and its McCarthy Era overtones (In fairness to
Senator Joe McCarthy, he was nowhere near as forgiving with the Russians).
NASA
Transition
head Chris Shank is the #2 staffer to House Science Committee Chair Lamar
Smith, and is expected to steer the agency away from its vital Earth science
and climate change research.
Commerce
The
Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is NASA’s
government counterpart in climate research. Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur
Ross has made billions on rescuing and leveraging distressed
companies, including coal, oil and gas firms.
He’s acknowledged that climate
change is a thing, offering suggestions to boost rail traffic and invest in
ethanol as climate fixes.
Ross’s
International Coal Group owned the Sago Mine in West Virginia. In January 2006,
13 miners were trapped in an explosion at the mine. Only one was rescued. In
2011, Ross sold ICG to Arch Coal for a reported $3.4 billion.
There’s
little indication that NOAA’s climate science is nearly as much in the
crosshairs as NASA’s. But, as one former Commerce official told me, “maybe they
just haven’t gotten to it yet.”
EPA
Myron Ebell is
a veteran political operative guiding EPA’s transition team. Ebell dodges the
“denier” label via a few old climate-denial standards: In the past, he’s either
said that climate change is “nothing to worry about,” or that it will be
awesome when fewer people die from the cold in a warming world.
When
hackers stole thousands of emails from climate scientists in 2009, Ebell described
the climate science community as a “gang” that was “without honor.” Multiple
investigations cleared the scientists of any wrongdoing.
Also
on the team are attorneys David Schnare
and Chris Horner of the American Tradition Institute. Schnare
and Horner have specialized in filing lawsuits and sweeping Freedom of
Information Act requests against prominent climate scientists. Bankruptcy
filings by coal companies have revealed their funding for Schnare’s and
Horner’s work.
National
Security Team
K.T.
McFarland, another Fox contributor, would become Deputy National Security
Advisor. She’s denounced the Obama Administration for citing climate change as
a global security issue.
Monica Crowley,
still another appointee drained from Fox News, will handle the press for
National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. She recently called global warming “a way
of separating Americans and Westerners from God and organized religion, and
it’s also a wealth redistribution scheme.”
CIA
Wichita-based
Congressman Mike Pompeo counts
on David and Charles Koch as his constituents. He’s been a business partner
with Koch Industries through an oil supply firm, and has said that President
Obama is “horribly wrong” about climate change posing a global security risk.
Interior
Department
Doug Domenech is
a former Virginia state official who blames the “regulatory war on coal” for
tough times in Appalachia, and says that the miracle mineral can relieve energy
poverty. But coal jobs have been on a steady swan dive since the Reagan
Administration due to mechanization.
Other
Interior transition staffers include attorney Daniel Jorjani, who works for the
Koch’s Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. Authors Alyssa Katz describes this
effort as having bankrolled anti-regulatory campaigns by the U.S. Chamber and
others with $255 million in 2012 alone.
Congressional
staffer Harlan Watson served
as chief climate negotiator under President George W. Bush. A leaked memo from
ExxonMobil, written shortly after Bush’s inauguration, sang Watson’s praises
and recommended him for a role in climate policy.
And a
few more
As
Transportation Secretary-designate, Elaine Chao would
lead on major infrastructure projects, including the Obama Administration’s
plans to ramp up electric vehicle charging stations nationwide.
Chao resigned
her seat on the Bloomberg Philanthropies Board in 2015 when the charity decided
to increase its support of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign. She is
married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – a helpful reminder that
sometimes, guilt by association means that you’re guilty.
Linda
McMahon, nominee for the Small Business Administration, has cited “conflicting
science on both sides of this issue.” The former World Wrestling Entertainment
executive didn’t go so far as to declare climate science is fake and has a
predetermined outcome.
Senior
Counselor Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News site regularly touts climate denial.
Bannon accused the Pope of “hysteria” for embracing climate action.
Domestic
transition head Ken Blackwell believes that climate models are rigged, and the
science is a “hoax.”
HUD
nominee Ben Carson has said there’s “no overwhelming science” on climate
change.
Chief
of Staff Reince Preibus said “melting icebergs aren’t beheading Christians in
the Middle East.”
UN
Ambassador nominee Nikki Haley fought the Clean Power Plan as South Carolina
Governor, even as her state endured lethal, record-smashing downpours.
And
Vice President-Elect Mike Pence has
at times said climate change is real, but that government policy can’t impact
it. But he’s also called it a “myth.”
Game.
Set. Match.
For
questions or feedback about this piece, contact Brian Bienkowski at bbienkowski@ehn.org.
