January 23, 2020: Documents released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to a Sierra Club lawsuit reveal that Administrator Andrew Wheeler relied on no evidence when he falsely claimed that “most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out.” Wheeler, a coal lobbyist prior to being chosen by Donald Trump to be the nation’s top environmental officer, made the bogus claim in 2019 in his first nationally televised network interview with CBS News as he attempted to deflect questions about the climate devastation already underway.
Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last April, asking in part for all records Wheeler relied on as a basis for suggesting that most climate threats are still decades away. EPA refused to respond to the FOIA request, despite having recently lost a lawsuit over an analogous past request. Sierra Club was therefore forced to sue EPA in October, which caused the agency finally to comply.
EPA provided only two short documents as the supposed basis on which Wheeler relied, neither of which support the Administrator’s claim: (1) an interview prep sheet that does not reference anything at all related to the claim; and (2) an email thread in which an EPA spokesperson tells a reporter, after the interview, that scientists often measure climate impacts in decades-long timeframes, which does not support the notion that threats are still 50-75 years out.
“Wheeler got caught making a baseless off-the-cuff statement in a shameful and obvious attempt to avoid acknowledging that climate change is already causing severe consequences,” said ELP attorney Matthew Miller, who has been successfully litigating the FOIA case. “EPA’s own scientists agree: the climate catastrophe is underway and will only continue to worsen if we don’t take immediate action to slash greenhouse gas emissions, which is precisely what Wheeler disgracefully tried to avoid conceding. Sadly, this is yet another instance of the Trump administration’s perilous pattern of climate change denial, apathy, and obfuscation.”