We Finally Know the GOP Climate Plan: A Coal Lobbyist in Charge of EPA, Meetings with Polluters, and a Denier Leading a Climate Change Panel

The last few days have revealed the three key prongs of the Republican climate plan came, and it is as bad as you think.

1. Prioritize Corporate Polluters and former lobbying clients of Bill Wehrum and Andrew Wheeler

2. Put  coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler in charge of  the EPA

3. Put  climate denier William Happer in charge of the  White House panel on the threats posed by the climate crisis

The details make their plan clear. Last night, the Washington Post reported that Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for Air and Radiation Bill Wehrum has been routinely meeting with his former clients in the fossil fuel industry from his not-so-long-ago lobbying days.

• Less than a month into his tenure at EPA, Wehrum, met with the nation’s largest power companies -- including those that had been his paying clients.
• According to Wehrum, meeting with his clients is appropriate “long as five different entities participate. And, he said, it does not matter how many of those entities are former clients.” In other words, he could meet with five former clients at once and it’d be fine.

Sound familiar? Wehrum’s following the example set by his  boss, Andrew Wheeler, who also continually meets with former clients and fossil fuel industry representatives.

• Greenwire reported that Wheeler's former lobbying firm lobbied the EPA on efforts Wheeler oversees. Darrin Munoz, the Consulting Director of Wheeler’s former lobbying firm Faegre Baker Daniels, emailed the EPA about superfund clean up at General Mills/Henkel Corp in Minnesota. Wheeler, who oversees Superfund Cleanup, signed a financial disclosure form that he provided "strategic advice and consulting" to General Mills between 2015 and August 2017.
• CNN and Reuters reported that Wheeler is heavily preferring meetings with industry over anyone else, attending more than 50 meetings with companies or industry groups the EPA regulates between April and August of last year, including Darling Ingredients, a company he previously lobbied for.
• Greenwire reported that in his first month at EPA, Wheeler Wheeler was scheduled to call or meet with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, BP America, Delta Air Lines, Valero Energy Corp., American Soybean Association and CropLife America.

Any Senator planning on voting to confirm Wheeler this week should know that he’ll surely bring those fossil fuel friends right on into the EPA with him.

Outside of the EPA, the Republican climate plan doesn’t get any better. The Washington Post reported that the White House is assembling a “Presidential Committee on Climate Security” led by notable climate denier William Happer solely to tear down the assertions of Trump’s own intelligence and defense apparatus at National Security Agency which is clear that ’ that climate change poses a national security threat.

Expecting Happer to take the climate crisis seriously would be a grave mistake:

• once said that climate science is akin to the “demonization of poor Jews under Hitler.”

• Is a former chair of the Board of Directors at the Exxon-funded George C. Marshall Institute

• was caught in a sting accepting payment of $250/hour to be funneled through his CO2 Coalition to produce a pro-fossil fuel report

• was compensated by Peabody Energy Co. with $8,000 donation to CO2 Coalition

• denied climate science numerous times

• said that carbon emissions linked to climate change should be viewed as an asset rather than a pollutant

• testified before Congress in December 2015 that the world has too little carbon dioxide and is too cold

In response Sierra Club Federal Advocacy Director Melinda Pierce released the following statement:

“The Republican climate plan is placing a coal lobbyist leading the EPA, cozy relationships with polluters, and a climate denier leading a climate action panel.Republicans are hitting snooze while denying the alarm is even going off.”