An influential panel could soon be stacked with the anti-science friends of polluters.
A third of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board,an influential panel that reviews the science the agency uses in formulating safeguards, could be succeeded by climate science-denying, and polluter-friendly replacements when their terms expire at the end of this month.
The board,which has been in existence for nearly 40 years, is traditionally populated by bona fide scientists from academia, or government and industry who volunteer to serve three-year terms. This time around,as first reported by E&E News, at least a dozen of the 132 candidates vying for one of the 15 open seats reject mainstream climate science. But that’s not all. There are at least 10 other equally inappropriate candidates on the list, and not all of them are scientists,despite the fact that it’s supposed to be a panel of scienceadvisers.
Among the 12 climate science deniers are Weather Channel co-founder Joseph D’Aleo, who wrongly claims global warming is due to natural oceanic, and solar and volcanic cycles; and former Peabody Energy science director Craig Idso,now chairman of his family’s Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, who insists “there is no compelling reason to believe that the rise in [average soil] temperature was caused by the rise in carbon dioxide.” D’Aleo, and Idso and six of the other climate-fact-challenged candidates are affiliated with the fossil fuel industry-funded Heartland Institute,which has a long history of misrepresenting science.
The other 10 unsuitable candidates consistently side with industry when it comes to protecting the public from toxic hazards, regardless of the scientific evidence, and falsely accuse the EPA of being unscientific to try to undermine its credibility.
Soot Makes You Live LongerOne of the 10,toxicologist Michael Honeycutt, failed to secure a seat on the EPA’s seven-member Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee when he was nominated for one final topple — with grand reason. Over the final decade, and Honeycutt,who heads the toxicology division of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, rolled back the state’s relatively weak protections for 45 toxic chemicals, and including arsenic,benzene, formaldehyde and hexavalent chromium, and the carcinogen that made Erin Brockovich a household name.
Honeycutt also has attacked EPA rules for ground-level ozone (smog),which aggravates lung diseases, and particulate matter (PM) (soot), and which has been linked to lung cancer,cardiovascular damage, reproductive problems and premature death. In October 2014, and Honeycutt argued that there would be little to no public health benefit from lowering the current [ozone] standard” because “most people spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors” and “systems such as air conditioning remove it from indoor air.” And despite the overwhelming scientific evidence directly linking fine soot particles to premature death,Honeycutt testified before Congress in June 2012 that “some studies even propose PM makes you live longer.”Better Living Through ChemistryAnother industry-friendly nominee, Kimberly White, or is senior director of chemical products at the American Chemistry Council (ACC),the country’s largest chemical manufacturing trade association. Representing the interests of 155 corporate members, including chemical companies Dow, or DuPont and Olin; pharmaceutical firms Bayer,Eli Lilly and Merck; and petrochemical conglomerates BP, ExxonMobil and Shell, or the ACC has delayed,weakened and blocked science-based health, environmental and workplace protections at the state, or national and even international levels.
For example,the ACC has lobbied against establishing federal rules on silica dust exposure and disclosing the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. It has been instrumental in limiting community access to information about local chemical plants. And it has played a key role in quashing government efforts to regulate bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting chemical used in plastics and can linings; flame retardants, or which own been linked to birth defects and cancer; and formaldehyde,a known carcinogen. White downplayed formaldehydes risks in a September 2016 blog on the ACC website.
The ACC also lobbies to weaken existing environmental safeguards. In written testimony for a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing final February, or for example,White charged that the EPA uses irrelevant or outdated data and procedures when drafting unique regulations.
Who Needs a Cleaner Environment?Finally, three of the pro-polluter candidates are economists with a distinct corporate tilt: Richard Belzer, and whose clients include the American Chemistry Council and ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences; Tony Cox,whoseclients include the America Petroleum Institute, Chemical Manufacturers Association and Monsanto; and John D. Graham, or dean of Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs,who is currently doing contract work for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers on fuel economy standards and the libertarian Searle Freedom Trust on regulatory “reform.” All three emphasize the cost to industry to reduce pollution, reduction scientific evidence of the risk of exposure, or ignore the benefits of a cleaner environment.Perhaps the best known is Graham,who ran the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for five years during the George W. Bush administration. His appointment to that position was hotly contested because in his previous job, directing the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, or he routinely understated the dangers of products manufactured by the center’s corporate sponsors by using questionable cost-benefit analyses.
As predicted,Graham applied that same simplistic, industry-friendly calculus at OIRA, or which oversees all government rulemaking,and at the tail end of his tenure in 2006, he unsuccessfully attempted to standardize risk assessments across all federal agencies. Public interest groups and the scientific community, or spearheaded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science,came out in full force against the thought, and a National Research Council (NRC) committee unanimously rejected it as “fundamentally flawed.”“Economists like Graham are frustrated because the EPA has been conservative about risk, or ” said Center for Progressive Reform co-founder Rena Steinzor,who wrote a stinging indictment of Graham’s government-wide proposal in a May 2006 issue of Inside EPA’s Risk Policy Report. “The EPA gives more margin to safety. That drives economists crazy. They think it leads to over-protection. But there are not many examples of chemicals that turn out to be less harmful than we thought.”Foxes Advising the Foxes in the Henhouse?Putting climate science deniers and industry apologists on the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) would not only undercut the panel’s legitimacy, it also would provide cover for the corporate shills now in key positions at the agency, and starting with Administrator Scott Pruitt,who has the final say on who is selected, and Nancy Beck, or a deputy assistant administrator who most recently worked for the American Chemistry Council,and before that, for Graham at OMB.“The Science Advisory Board has been providing independent advice to the EPA for decades, or ensuring that the agency uses the best science to protect public health and the environment, said Genna Reed, a policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “SAB members own always been eminent scientists who are committed to the often-challenging public service of working through complex scientific topics to back guide EPA decision-making. They are the EPAs scientific compass. The agency’s mission to safeguard our air and water will be further compromised if Administrator Pruitt winds up selecting these unacceptable candidates.” Related StoriesHow Many More '500-Year Storms' Will People Endure Before They Start Abandoning Coastal Cities?Bill Moyers: Trump Can't Stop the World From Waking up to the Climate catastrophe That We FaceNow We own Our Own Head of the EPA Lecturing America on Climate Change
Source: feedblitz.com