The Daily - The White House Plan to Change Climate Science

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

From Day 1, the Trump administration has tried to dismantle regulations aimed at curbing climate change. Now officials are attempting to undermine the very science on which such policies rest. Guest: Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Parts of the federal government will no longer fulfill what scientists say is one of the most urgent jobs of climate science studies: reporting on the future effects of a rapidly warming planet. Here is a breakdown of the 1,656-page report released last fall that warns of a damaged environment and shrinking economy.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. From the start, the Trump administration has tried to dismantle regulations aimed at curbing climate change. Now, in its latest attack, the administration is trying to dismantle climate science. It's Wednesday, May 29th. Coral, tell me about what happened in November of last year.

In November of 2018, the federal government put out what's known as the National Climate Assessment. This is a huge, sweeping, sort of comprehensive assessment of the impact of climate change on the U.S. It's over a thousand pages long. It's prepared by 13 federal agencies. It takes about four years to prepare. It's a huge deal every time one of these comes out because it is absolutely considered the most up-to-date, comprehensive, authoritative understanding of the impact of climate change on the U.S. And it's a big deal when it comes out in the U.S. It's a big deal around the world because it's also considered one of sort of the most

authoritative climate science documents in the U.S., it's a big deal around the world because it's also considered one of sort of the most authoritative climate science documents in the world. So this is kind of like the Bible of U.S. climate science. Yes, exactly. Coral Davenport covers environmental policy for The Times. And so what the Trump administration decided to do with this is essentially to bury it. They are mandated by law to put it out. There's a law that says the agencies have to put it out every four years. But they decided to put it online at about 2 or 3 p.m. on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. So at a moment when just about everybody is either literally on vacation or on some vacation of the mind.

Yes. The people who were not on vacation were climate journalists. When most Americans are tucking into turkey leftovers and waiting in line for Black Friday sales, the government has released a huge report on the impact of climate change. The strategy of trying to bury it didn't work at all. The report wasn't expected to be made public until next month, leading some to wonder if Friday's release was an attempt to bury the story. Mainly because it had such kind of stunning and deeply researched conclusions.

A dire new forecast, more frequent and more devastating weather crises on the horizon. For the southeast, stronger hurricanes and more frequent flooding. The Midwest, agricultural catastrophe, extreme heat destroying crops. And in the West, increased fire danger. That predicts hotter temperatures will kill more people. Crop yields will decline dramatically and ocean acidification will cause millions of dollars in losses to the seafood industry. According to those findings, rising sea levels will threaten public infrastructure and real estate along U.S. coasts.

And the impacts of that could be devastating specifically to the United States economy. The report states if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the country will see labor-related losses of $150 billion a year by 2090. Damage to coastal property due to the rise in sea levels and storm surges could reach nearly $120 billion a year. And the report actually found that these impacts could knock as much as 10 percent off the U.S. GDP by the end of the century, which is a huge economic hit. And I think that was the kind of thing that really sort of stunned the U.S. GDP by the end of the century, which is a huge economic hit. And I think that was the kind of thing that really sort of stunned the administration.

Essentially, the conclusions of this report totally undermine the policy agenda, the regulatory agenda of this administration. This administration's policy agenda very specifically is about literally emitting more greenhouse gas emissions. We're eliminating unnecessary regulations so we can create more jobs and wealth right here in America. I've ended the Obama administration's war on coal, and we're putting our wonderful coal miners back to work producing beautiful, clean coal. Under President Trump, we have seen the rollback of a couple of key greenhouse gas emissions regulations that were put in place in the Obama administration. One is a major EPA regulation on greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles.

Regulations put in place by the Obama administration call for new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon by 2025. The Trump administration says that's too high. There's another major EPA regulation from the Obama administration that would have drastically reduced greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, leading to the shutdown of power plants, freezing construction of future power plants. Trump administration is rolling that back. President's move ends a moratorium on coal mining on federal land and eases restrictions on coal-fired power plants. aggressively promote the exploration and extraction of more fossil fuels, more oil, more gas, more coal, with the specific intent of driving the consumption and the burning of

more fossil fuels, producing more greenhouse gases. I mean, this is a very explicit policy agenda. And this report says the results of this policy agenda are going to devastate the U.S. economy. I mean, these two sort of sets of facts are in total conflict. So not only does this report make the case that these policies will worsen carbon emissions and therefore be bad for the environment, but this report is suggesting that these policies that are meant to strengthen the U.S. economy will, because of the environmental damage that they will inflict, actually hurt it. Precisely.

So what happens after this, for the Trump administration, pretty embarrassing report comes out? Well, you know, at first the White House and the president slammed it. I don't believe it. No, no, I don't believe it. And, you know, then kind of tried to move on from it. And that was kind of what happened with the public face at the White House. In the background, it's important to remember that this is kind of a moment where

there was a transition happening among top Trump environmental officials. Previously, we had seen top officials like Scott Pruitt, who is the first head of the EPA under Trump, who spent his tenure pretty much constantly fighting off accusations of scandal and corruption, or Ryan Zinke, the former Secretary of the Interior, same thing, was forced to resign after multiple allegations of scandal as well. You know, these guys had been sort of these big, high-profile, very politically flashy officials. They had left, and their replacements were these two senior officials who are much less flashy, much less scandal-plagued, much less in the headlines, not public figures, but really,

really smart at the inside Washington game. The new head of the EPA is Andrew Wheeler, who is a former coal lobbyist who has also worked as a senior official on the Hill, also worked in the EPA in the George W. Bush administration. David Bernhardt is the new secretary of interior, used to be an oil lobbyist, used to work at the Interior Department under the George W. Bush administration. These are guys who aren't trying to pursue political careers in a big way. They do know how to pull the levers and get policy done. These guys and some of the other top officials look at this report and say, there's a bigger problem here. This is not just embarrassing.

This is not just a couple of bad headlines for us. looking to fight these Trump regulatory rollbacks, can use this document in court, in the Supreme Court, essentially saying, look, if your own administration says adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere hurts the U.S. economy, how can you make the legal justification to put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere? The law says you can't do these regulatory changes if they're going to substantially hurt the economy. There's a very clear legal argument to be made. And so these guys are kind of realizing this is a big problem for us, the fact that this thing is out there and exists and we're trying to

do this policy agenda. This is more than just embarrassing. So in other words, they're seeing this report as a potential legal blueprint for their opponents to challenge their policies in court. Opponents of these policies have already said explicitly that once these regulatory rollbacks are done and they go to court, they absolutely intend to use this report to challenge them all the way up to the Supreme Court. So they will take this giant climate report, the one that the Trump administration doesn't like, but know by law it has to put out, and they will introduce this as evidence that these regulatory rollbacks should be invalidated.

Exactly. So what do these officials in the Trump administration do once they realize that this legal exposure exists? Well, they can't do anything about the current report. That's out there. That's done. Well, they can't do anything about the current report. That's out there. That's done. But they start thinking, all right, well, work on the next report, which is coming out in four years, has just started. And they can change the outcome, they think, of the next scientific report. Well, how exactly does that work? Because you can't exactly change climate science. Right. And they're not saying we're going to fundamentally change the methods by which we do climate science. Because keep in mind, it's not just the National Climate

Assessment. That's sort of the major report that's put out by the federal government. But the federal government does climate science reports sort of across the agencies. So they are having a discussion that asks the question, how much information can we leave out? How much does the public really need to know? We'll be right back. So, Coral, what does the Trump administration decide to do to limit what makes it into these official government reports on climate science? There's a couple of different ways that this is happening. In one agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, all they do is scientific reports. They're inside the Interior Department.

scientific reports, they're inside the Interior Department, there is a new policy in place already happening that all of the climate science and all of their reports have to include some element of how climate change impacts public lands and waters and the different things that they do. There's a new policy that climate projections can't go past the year 2040. Hmm. What's significant about that? If you look at a climate science model, a projection, sort of what's going to be the impact of the warming planet, if you look at those, the worst impacts, the biggest difference, all happen past 2050. After 2050, that's when you start to see the really dramatic bad impact of a lot more greenhouse

gases. So this policy of saying our climate science is not going to include any projections after 2040 creates essentially, scientists say, you know, a falsely optimistic, falsely positive idea. It doesn't show you the bad stuff that happens if we keep polluting. So the worst of this, the worst impacts of the emissions policies that are currently being pursued by the Trump administration would make themselves apparent in projections after 2040. And what this proposal would do is just keep those projections before 2040 and therefore keep the worst, most dire predictions out of these reports.

Precisely. And this isn't a proposal. This is already happening at the U.S. Geological Survey, which is a scientific agency inside the Interior Department. Okay. So what else is the administration doing to limit the public's exposure to this information in these reports? So there's another major proposal, and this is more of a proposal. This hasn't happened yet. Specifically focused on the National Climate Assessment. In these big climate science reports, there's usually a range of options based on how much greenhouse pollution goes into the atmosphere. There's a worst-case scenario. Things get really hot. Things get really bad. And then there's a best-case scenario. We keep the worst of it under control. We just warm up a little bit. Things aren't so bad bad and then there's a best case scenario we keep the worst of it under control we just warm up a little bit things aren't so bad and then there's

usually like a couple of middle scenarios so the proposal is essentially don't include the worst case scenario just lop it off lop it off with the goal once again of shielding people from the worst case scenarios of what these policies might do. Precisely. And what's really remarkable about this proposal is that the scenario that they're proposing to lop off is the most likely scenario, given that this administration is putting in place policies that will specifically lead to the business as usual, higher greenhouse gas emissions outcome. So the administration is figuring out a way to make the science obscure the kind of long term realities of climate change. Yes. You know, I've been reporting on climate policy for over 10 years. And a story that we've written a lot is, you know, despite the fact that President Trump has mocked climate science, withdrew from the

Paris Accord, wants to roll back these regulations, we've actually written a lot of stories that say, you know what, they haven't messed with the science. And we wrote that story when they put out the National Climate Assessment last fall. They tried to bury it, they made fun of it, but they didn't mess with the science. And so this is something really new. They made fun of it, but they didn't mess with the science. And so this is something really new. And I talked with a scientist who had worked on the National Climate Assessment who said what is really concerning here is that the numbers put out by the U.S. government should be absolutely reliable, whether they're about the economy, whether they're scientific reports. Like, they should be so reliable as to almost be boring.

And what the scientist said to me is in totalitarian regimes, in the Soviet Union, when governments put out reports and numbers, people kind of laugh at them because they know they're just sort of cooked up to support a political agenda. And he said, I see the very, very beginnings of that here in a way that we have not seen before. So, Coral, how openly is the Trump administration pursuing this strategy? Because trying to hide science doesn't seem like something that any government agency would do very publicly. And yet, Michael, surprisingly, they're pretty open about it. Trump administration officials have publicly criticized these climate models. They've called these sort of worst case scenarios highly unreliable and inaccurate.

So they are sort of standing up for what they're doing and saying, no, this will lead to more accurate, more careful, more thoughtful climate science reports, even though these are statements highly at odds with sort of a vast consensus by the actual climate science community. But interestingly, they're pretty open about it. They don't seem to be running away from it. Coral, what are the implications of the changes that you've just laid out to shift the way we present science and I suppose even collect it? So the first is that if these reports start to come out this way with big blocks of information that have been cut out, the reports will present a falsely optimistic picture of what the future will look like despite the increase of planet warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That's the first step.

the increase of planet-warming greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That's the first step. The second step, though, is that they will be so at odds with the rest of climate science being produced in academia and around the world that we will start to see U.S. science discredited. But what about the whole reason this strategy exists, which is an attempt by the Trump administration to limit the legal exposure that you describedely optimistic, and it is totally at odds with the vast majority of other climate science being produced around the country and the world, and that is not considered valid, I'm not sure how good of a legal weapon these new reports will be. It is very much the thinking that this will be their defense, but I don't know how far you get when you're messing with science. I feel like beyond the legal implications, this presents a number of interesting questions. For example, if the U.S. government stops reporting certain pieces of

climate science, does that mean that it stops collecting it? Does that mean that it gets harder and harder to create objective comparisons over time because what was in the report four years ago isn't in the next one? And does it just create greater skepticism of climate science if the government is no longer considered the great authority on this? I think, yes, it will create greater skepticism of climate science. It also means the U.S. government is one of the greatest research bodies in the world. And so if the U.S. government is not doing this research, it's not that it won't get done. It will continue to

be done by universities. It will be continued to be done by other governments around the world. But this is some of the best and most authoritative research. Reports like the National Climate Assessment are used and evaluated by scientific agencies and governments all around the world. If the U.S. government is not creating these scenarios, is not collecting climate data, then yes, there will start to be much bigger holes in our understanding. It will just mean we won't have this data. I wonder then, is it possible, Coral, that the point of this is just kind of dead simple, that the Trump administration is trying to make this problem of climate change seem not so bad,

so that it can push its policy agenda through without much opposition from the public. I think that's right, Michael. I mean, yes, the idea is, you know, these are big reports that get a lot of attention and heighten this intense sense of urgency. And when this, the last climate assessment report came out last fall, it absolutely fueled sort of climate activism. And I think the thinking is, well, when we put out the next one, let's have it not do that. I mean, in some ways, it is very simple. Like, if there's not as much of a problem, then what we're doing is fine.

Even if it fundamentally changes our ability to understand the actual science of climate change. I think that this is not an issue that senior officials in the Trump administration are losing any sleep over. And in fact, that's exactly what the secretary of the Interior Department, David Bernhardt, said when he was recently asked in congressional testimony about his agency's role in dealing with climate change. He told members of Congress, I'm not really losing any sleep over it. I was reading the newspaper this week, and it hit the headlines that two days ago that carbon dioxide levels hit 415 parts per million, which is the highest in human history, the

highest in 800,000 years. And that was, of course, when there were no humans the last time it hit that kind of level. And so my question for you is, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most concerned, what's your number for how concerned you are about us hitting 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide? I haven't lost any sleep over it. Coral, thank you very much. Michael, thank you so much.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, in a closely watched case, the Supreme Court chose not to rule on the constitutionality of an Indiana law that restricts abortion. Sex, race, and disabilities like Down syndrome was passed when Vice President Mike Pence was Indiana's governor and was later struck down by lower courts. The case would have given the Supreme Court its first chance since the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to determine the legality of state laws limiting abortion. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.