“There has been an unprecedented assault on science during the Trump administration, most obviously to the American public in the context of covid-19,” John Podesta, a former White House aide who oversaw President Barack Obama’s climate and energy policy and who co-wrote the report, said in an interview. “But where they’ve been most aggressive is across all the agencies that do climate science work.”
The Biden transition team has yet to finalize any of its Cabinet picks for energy and the environment, according to several people briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations even though an announcement is expected in coming days.
Biden has promised to ensure science is “at the forefront of my administration.” Actually doing so after one of the most anti-science presidents in modern history won’t be easy.
In their report, Podesta and his colleagues urge Biden to issue a raft of executive orders during his first 100 days. Near the top of the list is establishing a new National Climate Council, a body that would be on par with the National Economic Council and the National Security Council. Such a panel would elevate the issue of climate change in the White House.
“That’s been a hobby horse of mine,” Podesta said of the proposed council. “I think they’re more likely to create a separate office in the White House to develop an ambitious climate policy.”
The report also urges the incoming Biden administration to emphasize that the mission of NASA includes studying the planet’s altered atmosphere; to reestablish a “social cost of carbon” to help policymakers weigh the value of decisions aimed at stopping global warming; and to make sure every agency researching climate change has a career employee serving a chief scientific integrity officer to review allegations of research misconduct.
Much of what Podesta is asking Biden to do can be done without the help of Congress — meaning it can be reversed by the next administration, just as Trump’s team undid Obama’s climate policies.
Podesta acknowledged the vulnerability of executive action. “But this is an urgent matter that needs attention starting at noon on January 20th,” he said. “There’s been a huge brain drain that has been the result of the disrespect shown to science in decision-making.”
The recommendations come in response to a Trump administration that often stifled research on climate change.
Maria Caffrey, a climate scientist who studied sea-level rise for the National Park Service before leaving government last year, said Podesta’s recommendations were “a good starting place.” But she added that agencies’ scientific integrity officers need to have the independence to investigate.
“I’m not sure this report fills in all of those gaps,” she said.
Jacob Carter, a research scientist for the the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the incoming Biden administration needs to go even further by allowing researchers to write scientific opinion that formally disagree with agency decisions. Right now, only scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and Food and Drug Administration are able to write those dissents.
“It is incredibly important for scientists who have significantly contributed to policies or rules to be able to formally dissent if they feel that the decision-making is not aligned with the best available science,” he said. “Yet this process is only currently in place at three federal agencies.”
The plan comes as Biden is still weighing who his top environmental officers will be.
Biden’s team is considering bringing on Gina McCarthy, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a major Washington-based green group, as domestic climate coordinator, three people close to the transition said, with Ali Zaidi, a former Obama aide currently working for the state of New York, as her deputy. McCarthy ran the EPA under Obama from 2013 to 2017.
Biden’s choice for the next EPA administrator is more in flux.
Michael S. Regan, secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, has suddenly emerged as a contender for EPA, these people said. Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, is also being considered for the job but has come under fire from environmental justice advocates who say she failed to address the disproportionate impact of pollution on poor and minority areas. Richard Revesz, a New York University law professor, is also in the running.
The list for interior secretary, meanwhile, is down to former deputy interior secretary Michael L. Connor, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) or Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.). Either Connor or Haaland would be the first Native American to run the department that oversees tribal lands.
While several Cabinet posts are still unsettled, these individuals cautioned, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm (D) is the leading contender for energy secretary. Stanford University professor Arun Majumdar may join her as deputy secretary, they added.
But CAP officials already have Biden’s ear. The group’s president, Neera Tanden, will be nominated to run the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, which is in charge of setting the president’s spending priorities.
Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
Power plays
ExxonMobil pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions and end flaring by 2030 after investor pressure.
The Texas-based oil giant committed to cutting the intensity of emissions from its oil and gas production by 15 to 20 percent by 2025, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company also said that it would stop flaring, the practice of burning excess methane from its oil and gas operations, by 2030.
Reducing emissions intensity generally refers to reducing the amount of emissions per unit of energy produced, but it does not necessarily entail an overall reduction in emissions if more oil and gas is produced. Exxon’s commitment, like many of the pledges from its peers, is restricted to emissions produced directly in its oil and gas operations and does not include the greenhouse gases produced when consumers use its fuel, for instance, to power a vehicle.
The announcement comes as Exxon faces pressure from an activist investment group that is pushing to name four people to the company’s board. The targets fall short of pledges made by European peers, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, which have promised to reach net-zero emissions.
Government spending package is set to address a potent greenhouse gas.
On the Senate floor Monday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the end-of-year appropriations bill will include several bipartisan energy and environmental measures, including a long-sought agreement to phase out a class of chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons that are widely used in air conditioners and refrigeration and that are warming the planet.
“We are about to get it done,” he said, “and that would be one of the biggest victories to fight global warming in a very long time.” The package will also include “provisions to boost technologies such as advanced nuclear power, energy storage, carbon capture utilization, and direct air capture,” per the Washington Examiner.
Disappearing wildlife
Spotted owls face an existential threat, but the Trump administration is not planning to provide protection.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service stated in a report that the spotted owl, which has lost 70 percent of its habitat to development and timber harvesting, is at risk of going extinct without federal protection. “But the owls won’t get it,” our colleague Darryl Fears reports.
The Fish and Wildlife report acknowledges that the owl deserves to be designated an endangered species, but the agency claims it lacks the funding and the resources necessary to make that change and instead intends to focus on higher priorities.
“Conservation groups decried the service’s reasoning as strange, considering the agency’s recent proposal to cut 204,000 acres of the owl’s habitat as part of a court settlement with the timber industry,” Fears writes.
The agency will also soon decide whether to classify the monarch butterfly as endangered. The Fish and Wildlife Service must respond by Tuesday to a 2014 petition from conservation groups on behalf of the beloved butterfly. “Stepped-up use of farm herbicides, climate change and destruction of milkweed plants on which they depend have caused a massive decline of the orange-and-black butterflies, which long have flitted over meadows, gardens and wetlands across the U.S,” the Associated Press reports.
Last year’s count only found 30,000 butterflies in the West. This year it could be fewer than 2,000.
Extra mileage
A total solar eclipse swept across a narrow swath of Chile and Argentina.
Visitors flocked to South America to watch the moon pass between the Earth and the sun, although clouds and rain also got in the way in some places, our colleague Matthew Cappucci reports. Argentina kept its borders closed as it grapples with elevated coronavirus cases.
