The White House is to launch a committee examining whether climate change jeopardizes national security — led by an official who once compared carbon dioxide to Jews under the Holocaust.
William Happer, National Security Council senior director, will head the Presidential Committee on Climate Security, which will be set up by an executive order from President Trump, according to the Washington Post.
Happer, who previously taught physics 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.”
The purpose of the committee would be “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,” according to a National Security Council discussion paper.
In November, the fourth U.S. National Climate Assessment 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, saying he “didn’t believe it.” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the report was “not based on facts.”
Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats 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 paper stated that “these scientific and national security judgments have not undergone a rigorous independent and adversarial scientific peer review to examine the certainties and uncertainties of climate science, as well as implications for national security.”
