The Trump transition team is circulating a questionnaire at the Department of Energy that has a number of career employees worried about a coming “purge” of those who believe in climate change.
The 74-question document was leaked to reporters and asks employees to identify if they have attended U.N. climate change meetings, worked on determine the “social cost of carbon,” and played any role in crafting the Obama administration policy that the president-elect promised to undo on the campaign trail.
From Bloomberg:
Two Energy Department employees who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed the questionnaire and said agency staff were unsettled by the Trump team’s information request.
“It’s certainly alarming that they would be targeting specific employees in this way,” said Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Scientists are looking at this with some suspicion, because many of the people who have been chomping at the bit to dismantle federal climate change science programs are now deeply embedded in the transition.” That includes transition team advisers working to shape the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA, he said.
“It is a remarkably aggressive and antagonistic tone to take with an agency that you’re about to try to manage,” an employee told Politico. Others told them that the questions were “harassment,” “naïve,” and one former staffer said it seems “like a freaking witch hunt.” Though the employees did note that “some” of the questions asked “are legitimate.”
The Trump transition team has not commented on this, conducting a very short daily question-and-answer session during the daily briefing call with reporters. There has been only chatter about who might be up for energy secretary, but all are key allies of fossil fuel interests, the group historically opposed to climate science.
“While there have been many instances of political appointees and career scientists clashing in various administrations, what appears to be novel here is the request for the names of so many individual scientists, and that it comes during the transition period, before the Trump administration has even taken power. This may be a signal of even more intense politicization after the inauguration,” The Washington Post reports.
Despite taking meetings with noted climate change advocates Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore the president-elect has appointed a number of “right-wing ideologues” to his cabinet, many of whom are opposed to key positions on his populist plank.
It’s worth considering the theory that the Trump administration will be essentially run by the cabinet, leaving President Trump to be the “Marketer-in-Chief” of whatever it is they are doing. He would rally both his base and use that pressure to lean on Congress who may be reluctant to pass some of his policies.
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