The E.P.A.’s lost scienceA few weeks ago, I set out to understand the breadth of scientific research conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency’s nearly defunct Office of Research and Development. For more than a half-century, this prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking work aimed at saving American lives. About 125 scientists had recently been told they would be reassigned or relocated to different parts of the country. They were the last of some 1,500 biologists, chemists, toxicologists and other staff members who had been laid off, reassigned or pressured to retire by the Trump administration. The remaining scientists in this group have until May 1 to decide whether to accept their new positions or leave federal employment. Here’s what I learned about their work. Decades of researchI knew that the work produced by the independent scientists in the E.P.A.’s research office frequently showed the need for stronger regulations on air pollution, toxic chemicals and industrial emissions. That has helped the agency prevent hundreds of thousands of illnesses and premature deaths over the years. It has also brought intense industry criticism. What I didn’t know was the vast scope of the research being conducted by this unit, most of which scientists told me had been lost or significantly diminished since President Trump took office. For example, last year, the Trump administration closed down a laboratory in North Carolina that specialized in controlled human-exposure studies to help understand the health effects of common air pollutants. The lab was among only a few of its kind in the United States. A laboratory in Duluth, Minn., was considered the premier freshwater research facility in the nation, until its scientists were almost all reassigned. And a team of toxicologists studying the effect of chemical exposure on reproduction was disbanded, as was a team of neuroscientists researching how toxins affect brain cells. In addition, multiple research projects that had started under the Biden administration to understand how climate change was affecting public health — the effects of extreme heat on dementia, for example — were abandoned. The E.P.A. “just blew up a very well-performing organization that was making a difference, not only in the country but in the world,” Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, who led the research office under the first Trump administration, told me. She said one of the unit’s unique features was its ability to research emerging issues as well as current environmental problems. “They had the time and ability to collect information that would help the agency decide, ‘Are endocrine-disrupting chemicals something we should be concerned with?’” she said. “‘Are nanomaterials something we should be concerned with?’ We don’t have those groups doing that now.” Trump administration officials argue that they have restructured, not abandoned, science. Many scientists who once served in the E.P.A.’s research arm have been placed in policy offices that oversee air or water pollution, and about 200 have been reassigned to approve new chemicals and pesticides. Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, also opened a smaller science unit under his office. Brigit Hirsch, a spokeswoman for Zeldin, said scientists could now lend their expertise directly to specific program areas addressing air, water and land contamination. The changes have has enabled faster and more accurate chemical evaluations, she said. Hirsch said the idea that the agency had abandoned science was “an absurd narrative from people who know better and union rumor mills.” ‘The state of science is struggling’But the firewall that once stood between scientists and political appointees is now gone, critics say. Scientists are now overseen by Trump appointees working on Trump administration priorities. Any science conducted in Zeldin’s new unit must “align with agency and administration priorities,” according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times. “The state of science is struggling,” Bryan Hubbell, a 27-year veteran of the E.P.A. who led climate research before leaving the agency last year, told me. Critics said they believe the Trump administration is purposefully eliminating science as part of its deregulatory agenda. “If you have no data I guess you can just assume things are safe,” said Earl Gray, who spent more than 40 years at the E.P.A. evaluating how toxic substances damage the reproductive system. Critics of the E.P.A.’s science office said it was biased toward environmentalist viewpoints and said they believed the changes would make the agency’s decisions fairer to industry. Related: Read our Lost Science series on the cuts to science and research under the Trump administration.
RENEWABLE ENERGY Trump administration will pay more energy companies to cancel wind farmsThe Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said on Monday, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month. The companies will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and the other off California. The government will reimburse the companies a combined $885 million, the amount they paid for the leases under the Biden administration. In exchange, the companies have pledged to invest that money in oil and gas projects, including liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast. — Maxine Joselow and Brad Plumer GEOENGINEERING A new idea to save the climate? Dam the Bering Strait.Two Dutch scientists have proposed building a 50-mile-long dam across the Bering Strait, the shallow waterway that separates Russia and Alaska. In a study published on Friday, the researchers propose that, under certain conditions, such a dam could prevent a collapse of a network of ocean currents, known as the AMOC, that plays a central role in regulating Earth’s climate. The AMOC (pronounced AY-mock) has weakened in recent decades, and a growing body of evidence suggests human-caused warming could someday lead it to shut down or slow significantly, with grave effects on the weather on multiple continents. The new study is a “proof of concept,” not an action plan, said one of its authors, Jelle Soons, a doctoral candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. — Raymond Zhong ONE LAST THING
The rise of the high-range, less expensive E.V.As Francesca Paris reports, something has shifted in the U.S. market for electric vehicles. Less expensive E.V.s with longer ranges are starting to take off. “For a long time, price and range were highly correlated: More expensive models went much farther on one charge,” she writes. But now, thanks in part to falling battery costs, some longer-range E.V. models can cost $50,000 or less. More climate news from around the web:
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