Only two weeks into the climate change-denying Trump administration, Republican members of Congress are already setting their sights on destroying the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
That’s the apparent aim of Tuesday’s “Making EPA Great Again” hearing, held by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, during which members are expected to discuss legislation that would severely limit the kinds of scientific studies the EPA is allowed to use—and greatly curtail the agency’s regulatory powers.
The Intercept reports on the so-called “Secret Science Reform Act”:
Scott Faber, senior vice president of government relations for the Environmental Working Group (EWG), had stronger words for the committee’s plans. “The secret science bill is just horseshit,” he told the Huffington Post. “No agency has more integrity when it comes to using science and being transparent than the EPA. This is a poorly disguised war on basic health and protections.”
The House Science Committee, led by passionately anti-science Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), last year tried to intimidate environmental groups calling for an investigation into Exxon’s climate fraud. Most recently, the committee made headlines in December for tweeting an article from the far-right website Breitbart that casts doubt on climate science.
And members of the House Science Committee aren’t the only Republicans seeking to dismantle the EPA.
On Friday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) put forth a bill that would eradicate the agency entirely. “When it was originally created, states and local communities didn’t have the technology or expertise to protect the environment,” Gaetz told the Courier-Journal. “We’ve come a long way in the last 50 years. Time and again, I’ve seen constituents unknowingly subject themselves to the oppressive jurisdiction of the EPA by doing simple things.”
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Gaetz, who has received massive campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, doesn’t appear concerned that his own state is already grappling with rapidly rising seas as a result of global warming.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on former Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt’s plans to gut the very agency that President Donald Trump has nominated him to lead.
Pruitt, the Times writes, seeks to weaken the EPA’s regulatory powers in such a way that it will be difficult for future administrations to undo. A draft climate proposal that Pruitt created in 2014—while preparing to sue the Obama administration over new climate rules—points to how Pruitt may go about doing so.
The newspaper reports:
The full Senate will vote on Pruitt’s nomination this week.
“The point here will be, more than in any prior administration, to reduce the agency’s effectiveness so much that it can’t recover even when the political winds change,” David Doniger, a former EPA lawyer who now works for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), explained to the Times.
Yet experts fear that even if future administrations could undo such changes, the earth may not have time to spare, as the planet is warming astonishingly fast—as the record-shattering temperatures in the Arctic are currently demonstrating:
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