Despite reactionary fascists’ delusional tantrums, denying Trump’s electoral loss with the same empty ferocity as they have similar losses since 1865, the year 2021 will bring a new administration. All the wailing and gnashing of teeth aside, upon their swearing-in, President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will bring sweeping changes to a Trumpified federal government.
We can expect them to turn the clock back on the last-minute rule changes the Trump administration is hoping to slide through here at the end, like the tobacco-industry-inspired secret science/transparency rule that they’ve finally finalized. Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of public comments opposing the calculated move to censor epidemiological science that proves soot poses a health threat under the guise of scientific transparency, the Biden administration will have no problem justifying discarding it.
We can’t be lulled into a false sense of security by the Biden win. As George Mason’s disinfo expert Dr. John Cook explained to Corbin Hair at E&E, history shows that the industry funds “a surge in misinformation the closer you get to some substantive policy," so "the closer that the Biden administration gets to actually passing or promoting any kind of climate policy…” the more you can expect to see efforts “to cast doubt on it, malign it, and erode public support for it as well as bolster the opposition, such as Republican leaders.”
The professional deniers are confirming as much, in another E&E story (no wonder Politico wanted them!) by Scott Waldman, about what organized denial has in store for 2021. No surprise, it’s obstruction! Ever-quoted mouthpiece for industry-funded denial, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, did what he does best and said the quiet part out loud: "It is much easier to stop stuff than it is to get stuff done, so we're actually, from a performance standpoint, groups like CEI, generally more successful when they're opposing things than when they're promoting things.”
Because — despite all the supposedly good-faith offers of climate action from the right — Ebell makes it clear they never actually had any real intention of doing anything, they’re just trying to stop it. Steve Milloy, one of the architects of the censoring science rule and other changes about to be undone at the EPA, told Waldman that there will be plenty of targets for them. “The next four years is going to be like a giant turkey shoot… it will be a target-rich environment, like it was for Obama. It’s a return to yesteryear, except with maybe more urgency.”
Nice to see that even the man whose career is built on denial noticing the increased sense of urgency to undo his life’s work!
But are professional deniers really getting ready for a turkey shoot, or a wild goose chase? Find out tomorrow!