The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists have gone to court to seek to block the Trump administration’s use of an ‘unlawfully created’ science report to justify attacks on climate protections in the United States.
According to the two groups, said report was compiled by ‘a secretly convened group of climate contrarians’, and forms the heart of the Trump administration’s efforts to undo the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment Finding, which states that climate pollution harms the public’s health and wellbeing.
‘Irredeemably flawed’
“The Climate Working Group was convened in secrecy, and it created a clandestine report – in brazen violation of federal law – that is being used to weaken protections against the climate pollution that makes life less safe and less affordable for all Americans,” commented EDF senior attorney Erin Murphy.
“The report is filled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations about climate change. Scientists whose work is cited in the report have publicly denounced it, and at EDF our scientists found it to be irredeemably flawed. Allowing the Trump administration to continue using the report to prop up its attacks on climate protections would be a travesty of justice and would increase risks for millions of people.”
The Climate Working Group was selected by Christopher Wright, the administration’s energy secretary, earlier this year, and its report, published in July has formed the cornerstone of Trump EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s proposal to eliminate the Endangerment Finding, according to the groups.
Since its publication, more than 85 scientists have published a scathing rejection of the report, while multiple comments have been filed with the Department of Energy highlighting the problems therein.
Lawsuit filed
The EDF, along with the Union of Concerned Scientists, filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, challenging the Trump administration’s use of the report and asked the court for a preliminary injunction.
The Trump administration has since issued a letter and affidavit to say that the Climate Working Group has been disbanded, making the lawsuit moot. The EDF and UCS pushed back against that argument in a brief filed this week and in arguments in court.
“We made a compelling argument today urging the courts to affirm what we have said from the beginning: this sham report was drafted through a process that violates the law,” added UCS president and CEO Dr. Gretchen Goldman.
“It can hardly be a coincidence that DOE Secretary Wright purportedly shut down the secretive Climate Working Group on the eve of responding to our lawsuit. This illegally created report is not scientifically credible and shouldn’t be used in EPA’s efforts to repeal the Endangerment Finding. People’s lives and well-being are at stake.” Read more here.
