EPA Administrator Zeldin to Headline Climate Denial Conference Tomorrow

Tomorrow – Wednesday, April 8 – the head of the federal agency with the legal authority and responsibility to limit the pollution that is driving climate change and making life more risky and more expensive is scheduled to give the opening address at a conference of an organization that has made doubting climate change one of its central missions.
 
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s appearance at the Heartland Institute’s 16th International Conference on Climate Change is a stunning decision given his role. The Heartland Institute is the same group that once launched a billboard campaign comparing people who see climate change for what it is to “tyrants and mad men” like the Unabomber.

“The choices that an administrator makes, where to go and who to talk to, is very significant,” William K. Reilly, who led EPA under President George H.W. Bush, told The New York Times in an interview about Administrator Zeldin’s upcoming address. “The only reason to talk to a group like this one he’s going to talk to is to call them out and correct them and remind them that EPA is a science-based agency.”

What will Administrator Zeldin say in this forum? Will he stand up for science and affirm EPA’s core mission of protecting public health and the environment? Previously, he vowed to “a drive a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” (emphasis ours)

His scheduled keynote comes less than two months after he announced the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, the foundational legal and scientific determination that climate pollution is threatening our health and safety. The repeal ignores the clear link between pollution and the rising dangers Americans see and feel every day – from extreme weather and rising costs to health consequences like asthma and heart disease. In fact, among many severe and pervasive flaws, Zeldin’s repeal of the Endangerment Finding places no value whatsoever on the health harms that it will cause.

Climate change is creating more risk everywhere, threatening our safety and stability. But Administrator Zeldin’s response sounds a lot like the Heartland Institute’s rhetoric: There’s nothing to see here.

The Heartland Institute has a long history of climate denial and disinformation

Since the early 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial, promoting skepticism regarding the scientific consensus on global warming. It previously worked with tobacco company Phillip Morris to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke.

FRONTLINE, the PBS documentary series, found “few entities have worked harder to instill doubt in American minds about the science of climate change than the Heartland Institute.” In 2023, the Heartland Institute sent copies of its book “Climate at a Glance” to thousands of science teachers to provide them with “the data to show the earth is not experiencing a climate crisis,” according to the New York Times.

But scientific evidence that humans are causing climate change is “unequivocal” and clearly shows that most of the rise in temperatures is due to the burning of fossil fuels. And the facts that were clear when EPA made the Endangerment Finding in 2009 are even more so today, according to a recent, comprehensive review by the National Academies of Sciences.

The Endangerment Finding repeal is forever tainted by a flawed report from people with ties to the Heartland Institute

A federal court recently found that the Trump administration violated federal law when it secretly formed the Climate Working Group to create a slanted report used as the basis of its proposal to overturn the Endangerment Finding. That report  has been roundly debunked and rejected by the scientific community. 

Many of the Climate Working Group’s five members have ties to the Heartland Institute:

• John Christy’s work and public testimony have been promoted by the Heartland Institute.
• Judith Curry has been featured in Heartland Institute articles and interviews. However, Curry has previously distanced herself from the Institute, stating that the Institute is only involved with “B-list people with agendas rather than focusing on high level scientific discourse.”
• Ross McKitrick has spoken before at the Heartland Institute’s International Conferences on Climate Change.
• Roy Spencer has held various roles at the Heartland Institute and is now a Policy Advisor for the organization.

Curry and McKitrick are scheduled to speak on a panel about the report following Administrator Zeldin’s keynote on Wednesday. 

More than 100,000 pages of documents related to the illegally created Climate Working Group, which were released by court order to Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, are now posted online and freely available to the public. The documents make clear that the group understood they were expected to produce a report that could be used to overturn the Endangerment Finding, and that they openly injected policy, legal and political considerations into what was supposed to be a purely scientific assessment.

Administrator Zeldin’s speech will be live-streamed. You can find it here: https://climateconference.heartland.org/