Goodbye science, hello industry

[Zorro]

Rigorous, independent research and analysis should undergird everything the government does. Nowhere is that more true than at the Environmental Protection Agency, which crafts and enforces a wide range of regulations aimed at limiting damage to the environment — and to people — from pollutants. Democratic administrations tend to use data to justify more aggressive regulation, while Republican administrations tend to prefer a lighter touch. But the current administration is following a third path, seemingly bent on converting the EPA into a science-be-damned rubber stamp for industry. And if director Scott Pruitt is successful, we will be living in a much more dangerous environment.

When his name first surfaced as President Trump’s pick to run the agency, critics complained that the president was putting a fox in charge of the henhouse. Pruitt has done nothing to dissuade the country that his critics were wrong. In his most recent move, he has decreed that academics and other scientists who hold research grants through the EPA cannot serve on long-standing panels that advise the EPA on the science upon which it bases its regulations.

These committees aren’t merely window-dressing; rather, their work carries considerable weight at the agency. The 45-member Scientific Advisory Board creates reports on the state of environmental science and assesses the EPA’s efforts to mitigate health and environmental impacts. The seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, mandated under the Clean Air Act, reviews the EPA’s work on air pollution. The 20-member Board of Scientific Counselors advises the agency on technical and management aspects of its research programs. Members of the boards are top researchers primarily from academia.

But Pruitt’s new ban, which he said is necessary to avoid conflicts of interest, would boot many of the academic researchers. It’s a stretch to argue that because the scientists conduct some of their research under EPA grants — won through competitive bids — that they can’t offer independent advice. There’s been no evidence of a problem with the boards, and it’s disingenuous to cook one up now as a pretext to removing independent minds from them.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-pruitt-epa-advisory-panels-20171106-story.html

[american_ideals]

1. Remember, Pruitt is just a tool of GOP billionaire donors and oil and gas companies.

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/10/14871696/scott-pruitt-climate-denial

It’s not about Pruitt, it’s about the Republican Party
My inbox is groaning with statements from previous EPA administrators, scientists, nonprofits, members of Congress, and assorted others, condemning Pruitt’s ignorance in florid terms.

But they are all about what Pruitt believes. And in the end, who cares what he believes? He is a functionary, chosen in part to dismantle EPA regulations on greenhouse gases. If it weren’t him, it would be some other functionary.

The GOP’s goal is to block or reverse any policy that would negatively affect its donors and supporters, who are drawn disproportionately from carbon-intensive industries and regions. That is the North Star — to protect those constituencies. That means, effectively, blocking any efficacious climate policy (which, almost by definition, will diminish fossil fuels).