March 04, 2020

U.S. gov’t makes climate change denial official

topic:	Climate Change
located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

A senior official of the U.S. Interior Department has been directing his staff to insert misleading language about climate change into the agency’s reports - a New York Times investigation reveals. 

In at least nine different cases, the official, Indur M. Goklany, instructed department scientists to insert language that casts uncertainty about the severity of climate change and portrays a false image according to which scientists are largely divided about whether or not the planet is warming. 

One of the statements included at the direction of Goklany suggests that climate scientists “may be overestimating the rate of global warming, for whatever reason.” Other statements by him falsely argued that carbon dioxide could prove beneficial to humans and the environment, as its increased levels in the atmosphere “may increase plant water use efficiency” as well as “lengthen the agricultural growing season.”

It is important to stress that all of these statements have been debunked, and that there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are accelerating global warming and that the consequences of this would be catastrophic for both human civilization and the environment. 

Such deliberately misleading language has been inserted into Interior Department reports concerning watersheds in dry areas of Western United States, and could be used to boost the allocation of water to farming irrigation systems at the expense of wildlife conservation efforts.

Goklany has been working for the Interior Department for decades, mostly in less significant capacities, and has a long record of participating in and promoting climate change denial campaigns.

Shortly after Trump’s election in 2017, Goklany had been promoted to deputy secretary and began to oversee the Department’s climate policies.

Several scientists reportedly resigned in response to Goklany’s demand that they embed misleading and false statements about climate change in departmental reports. 

Goklany’s unscrupulous efforts must be viewed in a wider context of the Trump Administration’s onslaught on environmental protection mechanisms. Under Trump, a sweeping purge of climate scientists took place in several government agencies - including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.

By eliminating scientific voices and halting critical research, the administration gives itself free rein to produce documents and craft policies that downplay - or flatly deny - the effects of climate change. It does so meticulously and exhaustively, leaving virtually no relevant department ‘untouched’.  

It is important that Americans understand that once climate scepticism is espoused as the official stance of the government, it becomes all the more difficult to mount legal challenges against its environmentally reckless actions - be it the defunding of research or slashing of existing protections. 

This egregious attack on environmental institutions and safeguards is inflicting systemic harms that could take decades to repair and is already having catastrophic implications on the planet's ecosystems as well as on the safety, health, and well-being of people around the world. 

Image: Pete Linforth / Pixabay 

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