Senate Democrats are investigating Department of Energy appointees’ use of personal email addresses in the lead-up to the Trump administration’s repeal of the Obama-era climate endangerment finding.
Court records indicate that DOE appointees were using personal email addresses to discuss issues concerning the 2009 scientific finding, which opened the door to climate rulemaking under the Clean Air Act.
Even though EPA was the agency responsible for enforcing and then repealing the endangerment finding, DOE had set up a Climate Working Group made up of skeptics of mainstream climate science.
“These emails illustrate that CWG members were intent from the start on manufacturing a false narrative that sought to inaccurately downplay the harms of climate change,” the senators, led by Adam Schiff of California, wrote in a letter this week to DOE and EPA asking for more information.
