‘Gut climate science fund’
Trump seeks to boost fossil fuels
WASHINGTON, Feb 14, (Agencies): The Trump administration is targeting federal funding for studying and tracking climate change while boosting the continued burning of planet-warming fossil fuels.
The White House’s 2019 spending plan seeks to reduce or eliminate climate science programs across an array of federal agencies, from gutting efforts to track greenhouse gas emissions and research to eliminating funding for NASA satellites that study the impacts of climate change.
Though President Donald Trump’s budget unveiled earlier this week is highly unlikely to be adopted by Congress, it is a direct indicator of just how little weight his administration is giving to the increasingly dire warnings from climate scientists about longer droughts, stronger storms and rising seas.
Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and appointed forceful advocates for increased oil, gas and coal production to lead key federal agencies overseeing environmental enforcement, energy production and public lands.
In the 160-page budget summary released by the White House, the term “climate change” is only mentioned once — in the name of a science program marked for elimination at the Environmental Protection Agency. A week after EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt suggested global warming might be beneficial to humanity, his agency issued a 47-page strategic plan for the next five years that does not include the word “climate.”
Asked about the absence of climate change in the budget and the strategic plan, EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said the agency will focus on its core goals which “are designed to transform the way the agency does business and more efficiently and effectively delivers human health and environmental results.”
Federal health and climate scientists predict that by the end of this century global warming will add as many 9,000 deaths a year in the US because of heat, costing as much as $140 billion a year. Hot weather promotes the spread of infectious diseases, reduces work capacity, increases rates of violent crime, reduces agricultural production and worsens air quality.
Environmentalists say the deep budget cuts, if implemented, would amount to suppressing facts about global warming while turning up the Earth’s thermostat by pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Also:
WASHINGTON: The top US intelligence official issued a warning on Tuesday about the dangers of climate change in testimony that was seemingly at odds with the skepticism of President Donald Trump and other members of his administration.
“The impacts of the long-term trends toward a warming climate, more air pollution, biodiversity loss, and water scarcity are likely to fuel economic and social discontent — and possibly upheaval — through 2018,” said Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence.