Is this Trump's first step toward dismantling Obama's climate legacy?

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published 9 December 2016

President-elect Donald Trump's transition team apparently wants the Department of Energy to send over a list of every employee and contractor involved in brokering international climate meetings in the last five years, The Washington Post reported Friday. The request is part of a 74-question questionnaire the transition team has asked Energy Department officials to fill out.

Other inquiries in the questionnaire — which The Washington Post noted one department official called "unusually 'intrusive" — are about "which programs within the DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama's Climate Action Plan" and about the social cost of carbon, a metric the Obama administration has used to determine "the benefits of regulations and initiatives that lead to lower greenhouse gas emissions."

Coupled with Trump's environmental policy proposals and his past remarks about climate change, The Washington Post said the questionnaire "provides the clearest indication yet of how Trump’s administration would begin to dismantle specific aspects of President Obama’s ambitious climate policies." "My guess is that they're trying to undermine the credibility of the science that DOE has produced, particularly in the field of climate science," said Stanford climate and energy researcher Rob Jackson.