Purges of EPA science panels by Administrator Scott Pruitt are just one among many moves in an ongoing dispute over the integrity of the environmental sciences in government policymaking. The latest Issue Backgrounder takes a deep dive with a briefing on five likely battles ahead for the coming year.
"Rep. Lamar Smith has led a strategic attack on climate science using the committee he chairs. Back in Texas, his constituents face the effects of global warming."
"Exxon Mobil Corp. will urge Massachusetts’ top court on Tuesday to allow it to avoid handing over records to the state’s attorney general amid a probe into whether the oil company misled investors and consumers about its knowledge of climate change."
"Kathleen Hartnett White's nomination for the top White House environment post is set for a Senate committee vote on Wednesday."
"Barry Myers, the CEO of AccuWeather Inc., had no answer when a congressman asked him last year if the United States had been experiencing more severe weather incidents than 100 years ago."
"For Scott Pruitt, 'back to basics' has translated to 'back off.'"
"The Environmental Protection Agency administrator came into office promising to discard his predecessor’s 'overreaching' focus on climate change and concentrate on what he called the agency’s real mission: cleaning up the air, water and land.
"In order to save glyphosate, the Monsanto corporation has undertaken an effort to destroy the United Nations' cancer agency by any means possible."
"Medical experimentation on chimpanzees has ended, but moving all of them into retirement will be a difficult task."
"Since 1973, Monsanto has cited dubious science, like tests on the uteri of male mice, and the EPA has let much of it slide."
"A pivotal EPA study provided the rationale for exemptions that helped unleash the fracking boom. The science was suppressed to protect industry interests."
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