President Biden made a splash this week with an executive order on the climate crisis, and with good reason. It shows a commitment to prioritizing climate and environmental justice throughout the government, domestically and internationally. But he also signed two other important documents on Climate/Jobs/Infrastructure Day: an executive order establishing a President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; and a memo on “restoring trust in government through scientific integrity and evidence-based policymaking.”
As the last year has brought into piercingly sharp focus, a president’s willingness to acknowledge empirical evidence, listen to scientists, and cope with reality, can mean the difference between life and death on a massive scale. And that’s what makes these other two moves so important. By making a point to bring in experts, the Biden administration can… well, govern.
The scientific integrity memo is particularly interesting, in that it literally instructs the federal government to review every anti-science move since January 20, 2017, essentially preparing to hit ctrl+z on everything Steve Milloy and other pollution peddlers tried to do.
(Not that judges aren’t knocking those things down anyway. For example, also on Wednesday, a judge ruled against the “secret science” transparency rule, delaying its implementation. He concluded that Trump’s EPA was wrong to rush it through as a process rule, and that it is in fact substantive. That’s important, because Trump’s EPA wrote in its original filing claiming it was only a process issue, and therefore not subject to the 30-day notice period required for major rules. If it were substantive, they conceded, then rushing it would “lack a legal basis”.)
The Biden administration's memo on scientific integrity goes further than just undoing Trump rollbacks and pledging to base its decision making on scientific evidence instead of politics. It establishes an interagency task force and requires federal agencies to appoint a Chief Science Officer and Scientific Integrity Official and review their science advisory committees.
Both the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists, who had outlined 10 science integrity steps the Biden administration should make, applauded the moves, as did others.
But of course, there’s still more to be done. Namely, legislation to make these sorts of protections permanent, but for now, we’ll just enjoy the win.
For science!
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories: