PoliticsClimate Change global warmingEnvironmental Protection Agency

Former EPA Employees Are So Worried About Trump's Plans, They Formed Their Own Alt-EPA

The Environmental Protection Network is already mobilizing against the draconian budget cuts.
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By 

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

This week, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is slated to defend drastic cuts to his agency’s budget, including axing 25 percent of its staff and zeroing out climate change programs.

In response, former EPA employees have formed a new bipartisan group called the Environmental Protection Network to help reporters, activists and policymakers penetrate an administration they accuse of waging an “ideologically driven” battle to cripple core functions of the agency.

On Monday, the group hosted a call to brief reporters on what slashing 31 percent of the EPA’s budget would mean for the agency. The scientists, lawyers, economists and engineers in the network submitted detailed comments to the EPA cautioning officials against scrapping regulations just because industry deems them onerous. The organization, which does not yet have a website, also helped reporters phrase Freedom of Information Act requests to make them as specific as possible.

“There are a variety of ways our experience and our unique institutional memory can help the work we can do,” Ruth Greenspan Bell, who worked for the EPA’s general counsel under President Bill Clinton, said on Monday’s call.

The EPA did not respond to a request for comment.

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President Donald Trump listens to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt after announcing his decision that the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, June 1, 2017.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters

The Environmental Protection Network plans to help counter legislation passed in March by House Republicans to limit the types of scientific studies the EPA can use when drafting regulations. The bill comes as part of a larger push by the Republican-controlled White House and Congress to give industry more power over the rules that govern it.

But don’t expect the EPN to join the ranks of the Sierra Club, Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“We don’t see ourselves as a green group,” said George Wyeth, who served as an EPA staff attorney for 27 years before leaving this January. “So we don’t see ourselves weighing in on narrow, specific issues. But we’ll take those one by one.”

Pruitt, an avowed fossil fuel ally whose views on climate change clash with those of an overwhelming majority of scientists, has emerged as a powerful figure in the White House since President Donald Trump decided to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement. Amid the waves made by Trump’s announcement, Pruitt rebuked his detractors as “climate exaggerators” and touted the United States’ success in lowering emissions.

Yet he still wants to eliminate programs that helped the country get there.

“Environmental protection is an ongoing process,” Greenspan Bell said. “This sort of suggestion that Pruitt is making, that the mission is accomplished, is unfathomable.”

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Before You Go

Donald Trump's Environment Guy Doesn't Believe In Climate Change
He does not believe in climate change.(01 of11)
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“There has been a little bit of warming ... but it’s been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about,” Ebell told Vanity Fair in 2007.

More than 97 percent of scientists agree that the world's climate is warming and it’s caused by human activities. Yet Ebell believes this consensus of climate experts is “phony” and “not based on science.”

In 2015, Ebell called Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change “scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.”

“It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel,” he added. (credit:Getty Images)
Even if climate change is real, he believes there’ll be 'benefits.'(02 of11)
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In a 2006 opinion piece, titled “Love Global Warming,” Ebell waxed lyrical about the potential “benefits” of climate change.

“Yes, rising sea levels, if they happen, would be bad for a lot of people. But a warming trend would be good for other people,” he wrote.

There would be “fewer and less severe big winter storms,” he claimed. And “life in many places would become more pleasant. Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don’t think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City.”

Ebell’s op-ed was full of fallacies.

For one, according to the EPA (which, again, is the agency that Ebell has been tapped to lead the transition of), climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including winter storms. (credit:Carlos Barria/Reuters)
No surprise, he's not a scientist.(03 of11)
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A self-described “policy wonk,” Ebell has no scientific experience. He graduated from Colorado College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and later studied political theory in the London School of Economics. (credit:YouTube)
He wants to throw out the Clean Power Plan.(04 of11)
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When President Barack Obama unveiled the Clean Power Plan in August last year, it was hailed as the strongest action ever taken by a U.S. commander in chief to combat climate change. The plan, which gives the EPA the authority to regulate carbon pollution from power plants, aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 32 percent by 2030.

Ebell has called the plan “illegal.” He said last year that he hoped the next president would “undo the EPA power plant regs and some of the other regs that are very harmful to our economy.”

Ebell, as the head of the EPA transition, is now “in a position to begin to do just that," The New York Times notes. (credit:Associated Press)
The fossil fuel industry helps finance his advocacy group.(05 of11)
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Ebell directs environmental and energy policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group that “questions global warming alarmism and opposes energy-rationing policies, including the Kyoto Protocol, cap-and-trade legislation, and EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions,” according to its website.

The CEI has a long track record of taking money from the fossil fuel industry. It received $2 million from ExxonMobil from 1998 to 2005, according to Vanity Fair.

The Washington Post reported in 2013 that Marathon Petroleum, Koch Industries, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers were among the donors for CEI’s annual dinner.

Murray Energy Corporation, America’s largest underground coal mining company (and a critic and litigant of the EPA), was the biggest energy donor of the night.

When asked about this on C-Span in 2015, Ebell — who had at first insisted that he doesn’t “represent” companies — admitted that he wasn’t getting as much money from energy firms as he’d like.

“I’d like to see a lot more funding from all of those companies, but unfortunately many of the coal companies are now going bankrupt,” he said. “I would like to have more funding so that I can combat the nonsense put out by the environmental movement.” (credit:Lee Celano/Reuters)
He helped kill cap-and-trade.(06 of11)
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Ebell previously “helped propel a shift in the political debate around climate change, contributing to the collapse of cap-and-trade legislation in Congress in 2009,” according to Frontline.

The bill, which Ebell called a “disaster,” would have seen limits set on the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted nationally. (credit:Associated Press)
He chairs a group focused on 'dispelling the myths of global warming.'(07 of11)
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The Cooler Heads Coalition, an ad-hoc group that Ebell leads, says its mission is “dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” (credit:Jorge Adorno/Reuters)
He opposes the Paris Agreement on climate change.(08 of11)
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The Paris Agreement, which came into force on Nov. 4, is the most significant climate accord ever signed.

Ebell has been a vocal critic of the deal, calling Obama’s joining of the treaty “unconstitutional.” (credit:How Hwee Young/Getty Images)
He’s worked to reduce protections for endangered species.(09 of11)
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Earlier in his career, Ebell worked for then-Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) in an effort to rework the Endangered Species Act so it would involve “as little regulation as possible” and be “more respectful of property rights.” (credit:Tom Brakefield/Fuse)
He’s lobbied for the tobacco industry.(10 of11)
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Jeremy Symons, senior advisor of the Environmental Defense Fund, says Ebell was involved in a "broad campaign" in the 1990s to help tobacco company Philip Morris make "regulating the tobacco industry ‘politically unpalatable.'"

Philip Morris also funded Ebell's group CEI in the 1990s. At the time, CEI was pushing the idea of “safer cigarettes.” (credit:Associated Press)
He’s proud to be loathed(11 of11)
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In a biography Ebell himself submitted when he testified before Congress, he boasted that he'd been listed by Greenpeace as a "climate criminal" and global warming "misleader" by Rolling Stone magazine.

"The Clean Air Trust in March 2001 named Mr. Ebell its 'Villain of the Month' for his role in convincing the Bush Administration not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions," the bio continued. (credit:Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
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