Trump’s strategy on climate: Try to bury its own scientific report

WASHINGTON, 26 Nov. - (ANA) — The Trump White House, which has defined itself by a willingness to dismiss scientific findings and propose its own facts, on Friday issued a scientific report that directly contradicts its own climate-change policies.

That sets the stage for a remarkable split-screen political reality in coming years. The administration is widely expected to discount or ignore the report’s detailed findings of the economic strain caused by climate change, even as it continues to cut environmental regulations, while opponents use it to mount legal attacks against the very administration that issued the report.

“This report will be used in court in significant ways,” said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. “I can imagine a lawyer for the Trump administration being asked by a federal judge, ‘How can the federal government acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, and then set aside the rules that protect the American people from the problem?’ And they might squirm around coming up with an answer.”

The 1,656-page National Climate Assessment, which is required by Congress, is the most comprehensive scientific study to date detailing the effects of global warming on the United States economy, public health, coastlines and infrastructure. It describes in precise detail how the warming planet will wreak hundreds of billions of dollars of damage in coming decades.

President Trump has often questioned or mocked the basic science of human-caused climate change, and is now working aggressively to encourage the burning of coal and the increase of greenhouse gas pollution.

Historians and veterans of public service said it was notable that policymakers didn’t try to soften the report’s conclusions, because that indicated the strength of the administration’s belief that it could ignore the findings in favor of policies driven by political ideology. “This is a new frontier of disavowance of science, of disdain for facts,” said William K. Reilly, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President George Bush.

A White House statement said the report, started under the Obama administration, was “largely based on the most extreme scenario” of global warming and that the next assessment would provide an opportunity for greater balance.

Under a 1990 law, the federal government is required to issue the climate assessment every four years. The latest version introduces new complexity in the political fight over regulations designed to fight climate change. That’s because, until the administration of President Barack Obama, no such regulations existed to be fought over.

Mr. Trump has made it a centerpiece of his administration’s policy to undo these rules. He has directed the Environmental Protection Agency to sharply weaken the nation’s two major policies for curbing planet-warming pollution: One rule that would restrict greenhouse emissions from vehicle tailpipes, and another that would limit them from power plant smokestacks.

The rules are grounded in a 2009 legal finding, which has been upheld by federal courts, that planet-warming pollution harms human health and well-being, and therefore government policies are needed to reduce it.

In publishing the assessment, White House officials made a calculation that Mr. Trump’s core base of supporters most likely would not care that its findings are so at odds with the president’s statements and policies.

Work on the climate assessment, which was performed by about 300 scientists, including career government scientists at 13 federal agencies, commenced shortly after the publication of the previous report, in 2014. The project was already well underway by the time Mr. Trump took office in 2017.

The decision not to alter or suppress the report’s findings — despite its scientific conclusions so much at odds with the president’s policies — reflected a clear political calculus, according to three people familiar with the White House’s thinking.  - (ANA) -

AB/ANA/26 November 2018 - - -