Another day, another round of troubling Trump staffing stories.
But you can help, dear reader. In addition to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee nominations we highlighted a couple weeks ago, E&E reports that the larger Science Advisory Board (SAB) is now open for comment. There’s 132 candidates to sift through, but here are some highlights (or rather, lowlifes) you should consider warning carpenter.thomas@epa.gov about by September 28th.
There’s Alan Carlin, who, as we mentioned yesterday, thinks the Climate-Industrial Complex is worsening the coming ice age. Other denierland favorites on the list include Joe D’Aleo, Paul Driessen, Craig Idso, H. Leighton Steward, David Legates, Kevin Dayaratna, Donald van der Vaart, Robert Phelan and James Enstrom. (Phelan and a few others got a nod from JunkScience, who told its readers to support their nominations.)
We’ll have to wait and see how many of these obviously biased voices get to bring their fossil-fuel-friendly (if not funded) views to the advisory committees. But there is some good news, as inspectors general are now looking into hiring decisions made at the EPA, as well as Zinke’s decision to relegate a climate expert to cashing fossil fuel checks. (You’d think Zinke could’ve found one of those named above to do that job, given their experience with fossil fuel industry funding.)
But those investigations will take months to complete, and in the meantime the administration shows no sign of slowing down its pro-polluter agenda and demonstrating how not to run the EPA.
While we wait, reporters are doing a good job of diving into appointee qualifications, or lack thereof. Most recently, E&E’s Robin Bravender wrote about Justin Schwab, the lawyer leading the Clean Power Plan rollback (the plan for which is expected to be released sometime this fall). Schwab’s main qualification for the job is his past employment at Baker & Hostetler LLP working for coal giant Southern Co (the ones that funded Willie Soon), so he is recused from the litigation portion of the Clean Power Plan repeal. But apparently that ethics requirement doesn’t apply to the non-litigation aspects.
Bravender points out that “Schwab's academic background isn't what you'd expect for an EPA rule writer.” His degrees are in classics, and he once said that “Greek literature interests me...specifically drama, most especially comedy." (We’d guess he’s probably pretty happy in this administration.)
Not to worry though, there are still great examples of American climate leadership at the highest levels. The newest Miss America, Cara Mund of North Dakota who (correctly) answered a question in the interview portion about Trump’s Paris pull-out by saying, "It's a bad decision. There is evidence that climate change is existing and we need to be at that table."
Congrats to our new Miss America, who apparently knows more about environmental policy than all the president’s men. It’d be one of those comedies Schwab loves, if it weren’t such a tragedy.
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