Steve Koonin has spent years battling mainstream climate science.
So it’s little surprise that Energy Secretary Chris Wright chose the conservative academic to help write a government-backed report — released in July — that called into question the severity of global warming. Wright himself has disputed the risks of climate change, and the five authors he handpicked to write the report align with that perspective.
But a review by POLITICO’s E&E News has found another common thread.
Four of the five authors that Wright selected to write the July report have spoken out against the endangerment finding, a 2009 EPA decision that underpins many federal climate regulations. That includes Koonin, who in February urged the administration to begin the process of rolling back the endangerment finding “as soon as possible.”
The criticism from Koonin and his co-authors is significant because the report they co-wrote is being used as evidence by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to eliminate the endangerment finding, which Zeldin once called the “holy grail” of climate science. EPA’s plan to undo the endangerment finding cites the Wright climate report no less than 16 times, E&E News has found.
Climate scientists, environmental groups and Democrats have seized on the revelation and said it’s further proof the Wright climate report is little more than a political document — written with the express purpose of helping the Trump administration unravel climate rules made possible by the endangerment finding.
The goal of the report is “to basically develop enough soundbite-worthy quotes that policymakers could use … to try to cast doubt on the science” of global warming, said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University who organized an academic response to the Wright climate report.
Wright has defended the report as an attempt to counter the narrative of mainstream climate science, which has made clear in thousands of peer-reviewed scientific papers that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels is heating the planet, with dangerous repercussions for people and other living things.
“Hydrocarbon-based fuels, the argument goes, must be rapidly abandoned or else we risk planetary ruin,” Wright wrote in a forward to the report.
“That view demands scrutiny,” he continued. “That’s why I commissioned this report: to encourage a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy.”
The writers themselves have defended the report too, with author Judith Curry, a former climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, telling E&E News that it was a “red herring” to question their independence.
“This issue of ‘independence’ is never raised about scientists employed by, or affiliated with or otherwise supporting, environmental advocacy groups,” she said.
But one climate law expert argued that the authors’ past criticism of the endangerment finding — coupled with their ties to groups that have advocated for its elimination — call into question the Wright report’s credibility.
“It’s the furthest thing from an independent review, it’s a preordained review,” said Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “It’s an additional brick in an already high wall of facts discrediting the report.”
The courts have also shown skepticism toward Wright’s framing of the report as an independent review.
Environmental groups have sued over the Wright report — largely because they don’t want it included in EPA’s review of the endangerment finding.
Last month, a federal judge denied the green groups’ attempts to bar its inclusion. But in doing so, Judge William Young of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts — a Reagan appointee — threw cold water on Wright’s claims about its intentions.
“The conclusion of the report itself shows that it is no mere ‘review’ of the literature. To suggest otherwise borders on sophistry,” Young wrote. “No reasonable jury could find that these words, arranged as they are, do not constitute advice or recommendations for a renewed approach to climate policy.”
Endangerment critics tapped to attack it
The endangerment finding stands out as a milestone in U.S. climate policy — as it empowered the federal government to take more robust action against global warming.
Announced during the first Obama administration, the 2009 determination asserts that six greenhouse gases are driving climate change and that EPA has the authority to regulate these gases in the interest of public health.
The federal government has used the endangerment finding to implement a wide swath of climate regulations, including those intended to reduce greenhouse emissions from vehicles and power plants.
For that reason, conservatives have long sought to overturn the endangerment finding — which they say has been used to drive up prices and create unnecessary regulation.
Among its critics are four of the five authors that Wright tapped to write the July report on climate.
Chief among them is Koonin, a fellow at the Hoover Institution. Koonin organized an adversarial review of climate science during the first Trump administration, and in February, he sent Zeldin an email offering “technical assistance from me and colleagues in the review of the Endangerment Finding.”
Two other authors — University of Alabama climatologist Roy Spencer and University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick — spoke in May at an event hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation entitled: “Is the Sky Falling, a Reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding.”
During the Heritage event, McKitrick said “most climate policies would make societies worse off.” A 2017 paper written by McKitrick “outlines a case for re-doing the science behind the Endangerment Finding.”
For his part, Spencer was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation last year as it was promoting a conservative playbook — known as Project 2025 — now being used by the Trump administration to attack a wide range of policies, including climate regulations. The document recommends the Trump administration “establish a system, with an appropriate deadline, to update the 2009 endangerment finding.”
At Heritage, Spencer wrote white papers and blog entries — one of which is cited in the Wright climate report. In the post, Spencer explicitly warns against policy based on climate models, a support beam of the endangerment finding.
He said climate models that warn of significant future warming are “unreliable” — even though mainstream scientists have shown them to be accurate.
Then there is John Christy, a University of Alabama, Huntsville, climatologist, who has spent years attacking climate models and claiming they have been manipulated. He has previously stated that the endangerment finding was a “political exercise” because parts of it were written by Obama administration officials. He pledged to work on rolling back the finding during the first Trump administration.
“When you can prove and demonstrate that climate models used for the basis of the endangerment finding can be falsified, that would at least bring the endangerment finding back for consideration,” he told E&E News in 2017.
Ties to groups opposed to climate action
Wright last week defended the authors’ backgrounds in response to questions from E&E News.
“These are not political people,” Wright said. “All of them were top and well-known scientists.”
He added the report is not about “their personal histories or their past, it’s about the science and the data.”
But at least three of the authors have ties to groups that employ and promote critics of climate action, including the endangerment finding.
In addition to his work with Heritage, Spencer has been affiliated with the Heartland Institute, which has long sought to tear down the endangerment finding.
And McKitrick is a fellow at the Fraser Institute and has been affiliated with the Cato Institute. Both have published and promoted his work advocating against the endangerment finding or other arguments against climate policy.
Koonin’s work for the Hoover Institution has long focused on tearing down the endangerment finding.
Heritage, Heartland, Cato, Hoover and Fraser have long criticized energy regulations and have collectively received millions of dollars in funding from fossil fuel industry groups or foundations that oppose regulations.
The only one of the five authors who did not have an extensive public record of targeting the endangerment finding for rollback is Curry, the former climatologist at Georgia Tech.
Speaking for the other authors of the report, she said their affiliations with outside groups did not shape the report’s findings.
“This whole issue is a red herring,” she wrote in an emailed response to questions. “The scientific content of our report, and any other report, should be judged by its merits.”
