House committee leaders aren’t on board with the White House’s reported move to create a panel examining whether climate change jeopardizes national security, which is expected to be “led by a discredited climate change denier.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month the White House would tap William Happer, National Security Council senior director, to head the Presidential Committee on Climate Security that President Trump would establish through an executive order. But four lawmakers, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith of Washington, said the prospect of the panel “deeply concerned” them, citing Happer’s qualifications, among other things.
Happer, a former physics professor at Princeton University, has argued that carbon dioxide emissions that scientists claim are causing global warming are in fact good for the planet. In 2014, he told CNBC that the “demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.”
“Dr. Happer does not have the qualifications to serve on a working group that should be composed of climate scientists, if it is to exist at all,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter to Trump Thursday. “Dr. Happer is an atomic physicist, not an expert on climate, and his statements on climate change have been repeatedly debunked by actual climate scientists.”
According to a National Security Council discussion paper, the panel’s purpose is to “advise the President on scientific understanding of today’s climate, how the climate might change in the future under natural and human influences, and how a changing climate could affect the security of the United States.”
Trump has typically dismissed reports indicating that climate change is a threat. For example, the fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment released in November asserted climate change would harm the U.S. economy and warned that hundreds of billions of dollars would be lost if no changes were executed.
But Trump wrote off the report, which was conducted by 13 federal agencies and more than 300 scientists, and said he “didn’t believe it.” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the report was “not based on facts.”
Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats also listed climate change as a security threat in a worldwide threat assessment last month, but the National Security Council’s discussion paper cast doubt on government reports concluding climate change is a threat.
“The decision to convene this NSC panel represents yet another action by your Administration in a line of many that run counter to the overwhelming scientific consensus on the causes and impacts of climate change,” the four committee heads wrote in the letter. “Given the previous statements you have made that fly in the face of explicit scientific evidence and the findings of your own DoD and Director of National Intelligence, we have serious concerns about any effort to construct a secret committee to question the basic scientific fact of climate change.”
As a result, the lawmakers are requesting that the administration immediately provide information on who will serve on the panel and keep all documents and information pertaining to the task force. They also are requesting scheduled updates to their respective committees at least monthly.
Signers of the letter were Smith, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey, Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, and Science, Space, and Technology Committee Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas.
