We
don’t need no stinking science
A deeply unpopular
plan by one of the Republican Party's most fervent climate deniers to restrict the
use of scientific research in government rule-making isn't even advancing in
the GOP-controlled Congress, but EPA chief Scott Pruitt appears to be moving to
adopt it as official agency policy.
As E&E News reported on
Friday, Pruitt announced a push for "additional science reform" at
the EPA during a closed-door meeting at the right-wing Heritage Foundation this
week.
According to attendees
and others who spoke to E&E News, this "reform"
effort is expected to resemble Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-Texas) legislative attempt to prohibit the EPA
from using scientific data that isn't fully available to the public and
"reproducible" in developing policy.
"The proposal may sound reasonable enough at first," explained The Intercept's Sharon Lerner in a summary of Smith's bill.
"But because
health research often contains confidential personal information that is
illegal to share, the bill would prevent the EPA from using many of the best
scientific studies. It would also prohibit using studies of one-time events,
such as the Gulf oil spill or the effect of a partial ban of chlorpyrifos on
children...because these events—and thus the studies of them—can't be
repeated."
And while Smith's bill
would restrict the EPA's ability to use certain kinds of crucial scientific
research, it would "allow industry to keep much of its own inner workings
and skewed research secret from the public, while delegitimizing studies done
by researchers with no vested interest in their outcome."
Pruitt's reported plan
to enshrine Smith's proposals in official EPA policy was met with alarm by
scientists, former government officials, and environmentalists, who argued that
it is yet another "dangerous" attempt to curtail the
agency's ability to combat environmental degradation.
Betsy Southerland, a
former senior EPA official who resigned last year in protest against
Pruitt's fervent deregulatory agenda, characterized Smith's bill and Pruitt's
apparent support for it as part of a deceptive effort to "paralyze
rulemaking."
"It's another
obstacle that would make it so hard and so difficult to go forward with
rulemaking that in the end, the only thing that would happen—in the best case
you would greatly delay rulemaking; in the worst case you would just prevent
it. It would be such an obstacle you couldn't overcome it."
Reacting to reports of
Pruitt's plan, Yogin Kothari of the Union of Concerned
Scientists called the expected move
"alarming" and concluded: "It's just another excuse for Pruitt's
EPA to really abrogate EPA's responsibility to protect human health and the
environment."