Donald Trump has picked Myron Ebell to lead the transition at the Environmental Protection Agency, an organization whose mission is to “protect human health and the environment.”
Ebell will play a pivotal role in choosing EPA personnel and help shape the future of government agencies that address climate and environmental policy.
But here’s the rub: The 63-year-old is no environmental steward. A noted climate contrarian, he’s spent decades trying to dispel what he calls the “myths of global warming,” defending the use of fossil fuels and shutting down any climate policy that would diminish dependence on them. And he’s expressed great pride at being one of world’s most reviled “climate criminals.”
By Tuesday morning, more than 88,000 people had signed a White House petition calling for Ebell to be ousted from his role as Trump’s EPA advisor. “Do not let a man who denies science in the name of profit lead the nation in environmental protection,” the petition reads.
Ebell has been called the “perfect” person to oversee the EPA’s transition for a president-elect who has described climate change as “bullshit” and a “hoax.” Trump has vowed to dismantle the EPA and withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement to reduce the impact of climate change.
The next four years could spell disaster for the environment.
A new United Nations report shows we’re already hurtling rapidly toward 2 degrees Celsius, the global temperature increase scientists say the world must stay below to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
With or without Trump, it’s critical that the world stays on course with prompt and comprehensive climate action.
Given this, here are 11 troubling facts you need to know about Ebell:
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.
“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.
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.
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.”
The bill, which Ebell called a “disaster,” would have seen limits set on the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted nationally.
Ebell has been a vocal critic of the deal, calling Obama’s joining of the treaty “unconstitutional.”
Philip Morris also funded Ebell's group CEI in the 1990s. At the time, CEI was pushing the idea of “safer cigarettes.”
"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.
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