Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion

                                                                        January 25, 2020

The Trump administration has gone to great pains to purge Obama-era science advisers from federal advisory boards and replace them with their own. Trump’s scientists seem to have the integrity many of his administrative appointees, e.g., EPA Administrator Wheeler lack.

The administration is going to have a tough time defending its actions in court. It’s possible that administration lawyers are counting on courts deferring to agency expertise in these matters. It is equally possible that they don’t care.

The hole in this strategy is that the administration’s own scientists are unwilling to validate wishful facts. In the clips below, Wheeler and Trump are both called out on their statements about what a proposed rule will and won’t do, as well when the world can expect to begin feeling the impacts of global climate change.

Is it any wonder that 1,600 scientists have left government since Trump took office? Although rarely spoken of, part of Trump’s legacy will be the shambles the executive branch will be upon his departure.

                 Climate, Politics/Capitol Light©, is a service of The JBS Group and Civil Notion
                                                                              January 8, 2020        
                                                                    
Feeding off of a failed UN Summit late in 2019, the almost daily release of reports updating and confirming climate science studies, student strikes, a continent on fire, and the already prominent place of climate in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, 2020 looms as a watershed political year for national climate policy.

To state the obvious, the re-election of Trump would be a devastating setback for the environ-mental well-being of the nation and the world. Almost as costly in terms of climate defense would be a divided Congress. Notwithstanding the rising number of Republicans in both the House and Senate who are now at least willing to admit there is a problem, Republicans and Democrats remain very far apart in terms of a willingness to do anything even close to what the scientists say is needed within the time they say it needs to be done.

Below is a thumbnail about the new million dollar ad campaign the American Petroleum Institute (API) is launching this year on behalf of oil and gas companies. The tack the Institute is taking is to pitch themselves as part of the solution, without altering their position on most policy matters. API, for example, remains opposed to a carbon tax, the regulation of methane and other greenhouse gases. The campaign is intended to support a heavy lobbying effort by the companies to keep fracking alive.