Science under siege: Nature reveals how the Trump administration abused the Environmental Protection Agency

Countless findings of opposition to science by the Trump administration and especially to the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency which is supposed to be the regulator of the polluting factories, and is currently controlled by them. The atmosphere among the scientists is tense. The CEO Trump appointed, Scott Pruitt did for about a year and a half until he was forced to leave his position due to corruption investigations, names in the agency, and above all greatly weakened environmental regulations without considering scientists

"Science under siege: Behind the scenes at Trump's battered EPA". This is how the journal Nature defined a detailed article, which for a change does not describe a scientific finding, but on the contrary, countless findings of opposition to science by the Trump administration and especially the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency which is supposed to be the regulator of the polluting factories, and is currently controlled in fact by them.

It was stated in the article that the workers who have not yet been fired (due to the Senate's opposition to cutting about a third of the agency's workforce but to only 10%) are every day in a state of uncertainty. They also feel they are irrelevant because the decision makers ignore their findings.

"There was a lot of fear and anticipation, but I thought we would manage with it," says Dan Costa, who was then head of the department's research, climate and energy department and retired when he saw that he could not influence the decision-making process as a scientist.

Nature interviewed dozens of employees for the article. Costa is the only one who agreed to be quoted due to his retirement.

The article essentially summarizes the tenure of Scott Pruitt, who was appointed by Trump to head the EPA after he "specialized" in the agency's repeated lawsuits in his role as attorney general for the state of Oklahoma. Pruitt was accused of using his office to arrange a senior job for his wife. For half a year he remained in the office despite the accusations and according to the article he made a name for himself in it, until on July 5 he resigned. Trump appointed Andrew Wheeler, a lobbyist for the coal industry, in his place. To his credit, it can be noted that he worked at the Environmental Protection Agency in the early nineties.

Pruitt made sure throughout his tenure as head of the EPA to systematically weaken environmental and health regulations.

On March 28, Trump approved the Pruitt company for the cancellation of point regulations designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. The next day, Pruitt refused to ban the sale of a powerful pesticide called chlorpyrifos, effectively reversing the demand of agency scientists who had previously determined that the substance had negative effects on brain development in children. Another decree was a ban on scientists who receive research budgets from the agency to be members of its committees that determine, among other things, the same standards. The vacant places were filled with industrialists.

Pruitt's final chord was the decision not to use anonymized medical data in environmental health studies on the grounds that transparency was needed. All medical data is transferred in such a way that its owner cannot be identified, and this means that it is impossible to conduct environmental health studies. Researchers say Pruitt's regulations will cause tens of thousands of Americans to die each year from pollution.

What alarmed the scientists at the agency was not that Pruitt and Trump were moving in a different political direction than the Obama administration; Government scientists are used to this. But under previous administrations, regardless of political stripes, there was at least some measure of respect for scientists. The scientists who were interviewed for the article talk about a complete disconnect between Pruitt and the directors of the scientific departments. Even when meetings are held, the warming of the earth is treated as "the one whose name must not be mentioned".

The article details other decrees, but mainly - the atmosphere in the agency that is supposed to protect the health of US residents and suddenly became the enemy of the people.

And by the way, Costa hopes that many of his friends will stay to keep the embers burning until the administration changes, and at the end of the article he compared Pruitt and his team to a locust that raids agricultural crops and destroys them.

For an article on the Nature website

More of the topic in Hayadan:

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• Trump's budget proposal: "Funding for climate change research is a waste of money"

• "We are marching to protest Trump's dangerous policies on environmental issues"