EPA to its employees: Ignore science when talking about climate change

Enlarge / NEW YORK: Scott Pruitt, administrator of US EPA speaks at the 2017 Concordia Annual Summit at Grand Hyatt New York. (credit: Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)

On Wednesday, an internal Environmental Protection Agency memo was leaked to the Huffington Post. Under the guise of developing "consistent messages about EPA's climate adaptation efforts," the memo suggests a number of talking points the agency's employees can use if asked about adaptation. Most of them are general statements about how the EPA would like to help citizens and local governments manage adaptation. But there are two that directly address what we know about our changing climate, and both of them do a pretty awful job with the subject.

The memo, which has been confirmed as authentic by the EPA, is from Joel Scheraga, a senior advisor on climate adaptation. In it, Scheraga says that the EPA's Office of Public Affairs has developed a set of talking points on climate issues. While he's pleased that many of them focus on adaptation, it's striking that they describe nothing but adaptation. Scheraga describes them as general "talking points about climate change," yet they don't contain a single mention of greenhouse gasses or any action by the EPA that might limit greenhouse gas emissions.

But that's hardly the only issue with the talking points, given that one is largely false and a second is questionable at beast.