Jean Chemnick
E&E News reporter
The Trump administration’s attempt to overhaul the way EPA does science may not have a long shelf life.
Many science advocates and past leaders of EPA’s expert advisory panels say the panoply of executive orders and guidances President Trump and his EPA administrators have issued over the past 2 ½ years — to sideline critical scientists, change how the benefits of rules are evaluated and blunt scientific messages — will dissolve as soon as a new president with a different philosophy enters the Oval Office…
Steve Milloy, who runs JunkScience.com, a website focused on undermining climate science, helped write EPA’s science playbook as a member of Trump’s transition team. PM2.5 was “weaponized” under the Obama administration, Milloy said, to justify a host of regulations for unrelated pollutants he views as economically damaging.
“The Obama administration, its war on coal, its ozone rules, all of these major rules depended on the notion that PM kills people, it kills lots of people,” he said.
So Pruitt and Wheeler have worked to put some of the most important studies on PM2.5 off-limits for future regulations.
