A gloomy forecast
DONALD TRUMP may be wedded to the Republican dogma of small government, given that many key positions are still vacant almost a year after his inauguration. But Feedback suspects that if the president has been slow to choose his nominees, it is only because he is carefully selecting the ones who will most irritate his Democratic opponents.
Witness the most gripping TV to come out of the US recently, the bleakly comic series known as 鈥渉earings on nominees for the Environmental Protection Agency鈥�. Here, visibly exasperated Democrat senators interrogate the scientific credentials of candidates whose r茅sum茅s might struggle to reach the bottom of the page they鈥檙e printed on.
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In a previous episode, we saw William Wehrum 鈥� nominated to lead US efforts to tackle air pollution 鈥� struggle to interpret a chart showing the concurrent rise in global temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide (28 October).
This week, it was Kathleen Hartnett White鈥檚 turn in the hot seat. Selected to direct the Council on Environmental Quality, a role that oversees federal environmental policy, Hartnett White was grilled so thoroughly by senators that at times it felt like the Capitol鈥檚 sprinkler system might kick in.
鈥溾�滿odern air is a little too clean for optimum health.鈥� The surprising conclusions of toxicologist Robert Phalen, who is the latest addition to Trump鈥檚 science advisory board鈥�
Asked if she stood by previous comments that carbon dioxide was not dangerous to the environment, Hartnett White said that atmospheric carbon was in fact a plant nutrient, with none of the characteristics of a pollutant that could harm human health. Excuse us while we hyperventilate into this paper bag.
Changeable weather
SENATOR Sheldon Whitehouse wanted to know if Hartnett White thought the law of thermal expansion applied to seawater? 鈥淚 do not have any kind of expertise or even much layman鈥檚 study of the ocean dynamics and the climate change issues,鈥� she replied. Reassuring stuff.
And to the all-important question: Hartnett White told the panel that while she did believe climate change was real, there was much uncertainty over the extent to which human activity was to blame. Would she rely on scientists to clarify that uncertainty, Senator Ben Cardin wanted to know. 鈥淣o, I鈥檝e had that question for a very long time,鈥� Hartnett White replied.
With such a lack of confidence in our ability to change the environment, and a refusal to be informed otherwise, Feedback wonders what Hartnett White hopes to achieve in her role as the US environmental .
Brightening up
FEW will have identified lumps of coal as the solution to sexual assaults 鈥� unless stuffed into a stocking as an improvised weapon. But one advocate of this unlikely ally is Rick Perry, US secretary of energy, climate change sceptic and the country鈥檚 leading champion of all things combustible.
Speaking at an energy policy discussion earlier this month, Perry suggested that not only were fossil fuels instrumental in lifting developing countries out of poverty, but they also had the capacity to reduce sex crime. 鈥淲hen the lights are on,鈥� he told delegates, 鈥測ou have light that shines, the righteousness, if you will, on those types of acts.鈥�
The remarks ignited a storm of criticism online (a source of energy we鈥檝e yet to harness, sadly) with Michael Brune of the conservationist Sierra Club calling on Perry to resign from his post.
That might not be much in the way of punishment to Perry, who had previously called for the Department of Energy to be scrapped, and then took on its leadership without realising that the main focus of his role would not be governing oil, coal or other fuels, but overseeing the US nuclear arsenal.
A warm front
IT MAY feel like the US strategy to tackle climate change is to will it out of existence by ignoring all evidence for it. Certainly, this would explain why so many Puerto Ricans are still reading by candlelight. However, do not despair. California鈥檚 governor Jerry Brown has emerged as the leading voice of reason.
At the COP23 conference in Bonn, Germany, last week, Brown unveiled 鈥淎merica鈥檚 Pledge鈥�, a movement to keep the US within the Paris Accord commitment to hold global temperature rise under 2掳C. He told USA Today: 鈥淭here is a large part of America 鈥� well over a majority 鈥� that is committed to serious climate action, because we know global warming is an existential threat.鈥�
The coalition includes Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey and Virginia. Is there something these states have in common that encourages preoccupation with rising sea levels, ?
Listening in
NOT content with cataloguing every aspect of our online lives, tech companies are keen to extend their services/surveillance apparatus into our homes. Devices such as Amazon鈥檚 Echo offer an internet connected home assistant that constantly listens to its surroundings, ready to respond to voice commands.
The privacy concerns should be obvious to most, but perhaps not to the industrious minds at design studio Ninety7. They built a battery pack for the Echo Dot that allows you to take it anywhere for up to 10 hours. So naturally it was christened the DOX.
Perhaps someone should have told them that in internet slang, to 鈥渄ox鈥� someone is to release all of their sensitive personal information online.
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