This is highly dismaying, if unsurprising:
White House officials barred a State Department intelligence agency from submitting written testimony this week to the House Intelligence Committee warning that human-caused climate change is “possibly catastrophic.” The move came after State officials refused to excise the document’s references to federal scientific findings on climate change.
The effort to edit, and ultimately suppress, the prepared testimony by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research comes as the Trump administration is debating how best to challenge the fact that burning fossil fuels is warming the planet and could pose serious risks unless the world makes deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. Senior military and intelligence officials have continued to warn climate change could undermine America’s national security — a position President Trump rejects.
Officials from the White House’s Office of Legislative Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, and National Security Council all raised objections to parts of the testimony that Rod Schoonover, who works in the Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, prepared to present on the bureau’s behalf for a hearing Wednesday. [WaPo]
On the existence of climate change, we’ve seen this Administration deny it, call it a hoax, refuse to acknowledge our responsibility for our share of it, and try to suggest it’ll be a net positive.
Anything to avoid taking leadership on the issue.
This is nothing new to folks who’ve kept track of what may be the most important issue of our time and how various GOP-controlled parts of our government have reacted. But for those who’ve become newly aware of it, it’s important to understand who has failed in their responsibilities because, so long as we have a country that is dependent on the votes of its citizens to select its readers, it’s important to understand the shirkers have been the GOP, and the Democrats have, at least, tried.
Analyses of the motivations of the GOP I’ve performed before, but today I’ll just leave it here. This Administration never really had the nerve for this sort of challenge, and the promotion of an amateur to the position of President will haunt this nation for a long time to come.
