The EPA is recruiting experts to review climate-change findings, says a senior agency official, in what may be the latest attempt to undermine efforts to combat climate change.
“The program will use ‘red team, blue team’ exercises to conduct an ‘at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science,’ the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations,” reports E&E News.
“‘It’s a way to survey the landscape before reopening the endangerment finding,’ said Myron Ebell, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the groups that filed a petition with the agency to undo the 2009 scientific determination that formed the basis for the Democratic Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases,” says Reuters.
Some environmentalists fear that EPA head Scott Pruitt will use the opportunity to challenge the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that gave the EPA authority under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions, says Reuters. But most environmentalists also believe that the courts would deny any effort to undo the Supreme Court’s so-called endangerment finding.
“If he has any grasp of scientific and legal reality, he would realize that it’s a fool’s errand to reverse the endangerment determination,” said David Doniger, climate director for the Natural Resources Defense Counsel.