This administration’s contempt for science is well-known. What isn’t as well-known is just how deeply ingrained that contempt has become, as it permeates through all our federal agencies.
Prominent US climate scientists have told the Guardian that the Trump administration is holding up research funding as their projects undergo an unprecedented political review by the high-school football teammate of the US interior secretary.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being someone’s high school teammate. The problem is, this particular high school football buddy of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is now in charge of conducting a “political review" of some 5.5 billion dollars in funding that’s dedicated to research, conservation and land use. And he’s completely, thoroughly and woefully unqualified to do so.
Steve Howke, one of Zinke’s high-school football teammates, oversees this review. Howke’s highest degree is a bachelor’s in business administration. Until Zinke appointed him as an interior department senior adviser to the acting assistant secretary of policy, management and budget, Howke had spent his entire career working in credit unions.
Any project requiring funding over $50,000 must now receive Howke’s seal of approval. It’s not clear how much actual discretion Howke has to carry out any real review of these projects (assuming he even has the capacity or interest to do so), other than to apply the administration’s political litmus test that essentially guts funding for anything having to do with climate change. Of course, that's bad enough, considering these projects directly impact our ability to predict and plan for such things as wildfires, droughts, and flooding.
One of the largest programs affected is the Climate Adaptation Science Centers, a network of eight regionally focused research centers located at “host” universities across the country.
“I think there is a real suspicion about what science is being done, and if you were going to design a way to bog things down so not much could happen, you might do it like this,” said a scientist affiliated with one of the centers who asked to remain anonymous owing to the perceived risks of speaking out.
As a result of this systematic de-funding of climate research in particular, scientists are unable to bring in new students, or hire post-docs to do the hard work and analysis necessary to predict and prevent future tragedies resulting from climate events. All that research, including pending work on recent natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey and wildfires in New Mexico,
simply grinds to a halt.
“Funneling every grant over $50,000 to a single political appointee from departments that range from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to the [US Geological Survey] to the Bureau of Reclamation suggests a political micromanagement approach,” said David Hayes, an interior deputy secretary in the Obama and Clinton administrations who now directs the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at the NYU School of Law. He described it as “political interference” that is “both unprecedented and pernicious”.
As climate-spawned disasters continue to unfold with increasing frequency, many Americans are going to end up paying a terrible price for this policy of malignant neglect. Because for anything that requires science or research in this administration, there’s now—quite literally—a “no-brainer” in charge.