The head of Donald Trump’s EPA transition team, Myron Ebell, is not only a climate-change skeptic. He also has a history of discouraging pesticide regulations, writes Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, pointing to Ebell’s role as the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).
“The group runs a website, SafeChemicalPolicy.org, that exists to downplay the health and ecological impacts of chemicals,” Philpott says. CEI “completely denies” that neonicotinoids — a class of pesticides that has been linked to the widespread death of honeybees since the 1990s — is harmful to bees. The organization “rejects any role for government action in protecting bees,” says Philpott, including the EPA’s announcement that it might take action against Bayer’s imidacloprid, a neonicotinoid commonly used in soybean and cotton fields. The EPA’s own review of research revealed that the pesticide seriously damages bee colonies.
So far the agency hasn’t taken action against Bayer, and it’s unclear whether it would under an EPA influenced by Ebell. Likewise, with Ebell pushing the agency in a new direction, it might not regulate the pesticide atrazine, which has been shown to disrupt endocrine function and is currently under review by the agency.
Philpott says that CEI’s pro-pesticide stance has to do with where the group get its funding. “The center does not reveal its funding sources, but back in 2013, it allowed a Washington Post reporter to have a look at the biggest donors to its annual gala dinner that year. Predictably, the group got a nice cash infusion from petroleum, coal, and auto interests. But Big Ag chipped in, too: Pesticide/seed giants Monsanto and Syngenta each gave $10,000, as did their trade group, the Biotechnology Industry Organization.”