By Anne Polansky CSPW Sr. Climate Policy Analyst Federal whistleblower Joel Clement charged both Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and President Donald Trump with “poor leadership, waste, and … failures on climate change” in a fiercely critical letter of resignation submitted yesterday, effective tomorrow. In the letter, Clement accused President Trump and top Department of Interior [...]
[F]or … three compelling reasons – poor leadership, waste, and your failures on climate change,” a senior Department of Interior Official, Joel Clement, submitted his resignation on October 4 to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. In his resignation letter, Clement said the administration is “shackled to special interests” and “unwilling to lead on climate change.” Just two weeks earlier, Clement had received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage.
On Sept 21, 2017, Joel Clement received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage from The Shafeek Nader Trust for the Community Interest. In announcing Clement as one of this year’s recipients of the prize, the trust said that Clement upheld “the highest standards of his civil service oath as a senior federal official” when “he blew the whistle on the Trump Administration’s Interior Department for using personnel reassignment to shut down climate change programs, muzzle scientists and undermine subject matter experts.” Clement urges other employees to speak out as he has.
ExxonMobil, which refuses to acknowledge risks associated with climate change impacts, owns two large refineries in Texas that are poorly prepared for sea level rise, storm surges, extreme flooding, and so on, and now Hurricane Harvey has caused damage to oil facilities and interrupted operations for weeks. Will ExxonMobil now begin to disclose these climate-related risks to shareholders?
Damage caused by Hurricane Harvey in Rockport, Texas, Aug. 28, 2017. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. 1st Class Malcolm McClendon Report identifies rising risks posed by hurricanes as planet warms By Nicky Sundt CSPW Senior Fellow The Climate Change Special Report, arguably the most important report produced by the interagency U.S. Global [...]
Scott Pruitt, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Source: EPA By Nicky Sundt CSPW Senior Fellow “Frankly this report ought to be subjected to peer-reviewed, objective-reviewed methodology and evaluation,” said Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, when asked about the leaked draft of a Federal Climate Science Special Report (CSSR). [...]
By Anne Polansky Source: https://go.nasa.gov/2vXO0Vm Covering the year 2013, this is our latest installment in a timeline series addressing how the Exxon Mobil Corporation has characterized risks to its business operations associated with climate change (in its annual 10-K reports to shareholders), in light of what corporate leadership knew, or reasonably could have [...]
Troubled and opaque Administration review process is a harbinger of problems for the Fourth National Climate Assessment By Nicky Sundt CSPW Senior Fellow A final draft of a key federal report on the science behind climate change has been leaked to the New York Times and made public. The Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), produced [...]
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry By Anne Polansky and Nicky Sundt Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and others are calling for a red-team/blue-team (RT/BT) exercise to resolve differences of opinion regarding the science of global climate change. The approach is meant to resolve conflict through a [...]
“Hello Mr. President, I hope you will take action on climate change,” CSPW founder and George W. Bush White House climate change whistleblower Rick Piltz said politely but firmly to President Bush in the White House Rose Garden on a sunny morning in June 2001. The President was just about to make a much-anticipated statement [...]