Laurie Williams and husband Alan Zabel worked for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for more than 20 years, and they know more about climate change than most politicians. But when the couple released a video on the Internet expressing their concerns over the Obama administration’s plans to use cap-and-trade legislation to fight climate change, they were told to keep it to themselves.Public Employees for Environmental Responsibity (PEER) takes exception to the treatment of the two long-term federal employees. You can read their news release here. It says in part:
Williams and Zabel oppose cap and trade -- a controversial government allowance program in which companies are issued emissions limits, or caps, which they can then trade -- as a means to fight climate change.
On their own time, Williams and Zabel made a video expressing these opinions. [snip]
"Cap-and-trade with offsets provides a false sense of progress and puts money in the pockets of investors," Zabel said in the video. "We think that these restrictions might not be constitutional," he said.
Their bosses in San Francisco approved the effort by Williams and Zabel to release the tape, but after an editorial they wrote appeared in the Washington Post, EPA Director Lisa Jackson ordered the pair to remove the video or face disciplinary action.
“EPA is abusing ethics rules to gag two conscientious employees who have every right to speak out as citizens,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, who has re-posted the original video and its script. “EPA reversed itself because someone in headquarters had a tantrum about their Washington Post essay.”The video has been reposted on YouTube by many others since Williams and Zabel removed it. You can watch it here.
Williams and Zabel, who are married to each other, go to great lengths in the video and other writings to provide disclaimers affirming that their views are personal and do not represent the agency. However, EPA now objects to them even referring to their on-the-job experience as the basis for their views.
“How is government supposed to be transparent when public servants are forbidden from discussing the nature of their work?” asked Ruch. “EPA and every other federal agency should have simple, clear guidelines so that government workers can express themselves freely without political prior restraints.”
Remember Alan Carlin? He is a senior analyst in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics and a 37-year veteran of the agency. He received the message that dissent was not welcome at EPA earlier this year.
In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an "endangerment" finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it -- even if Congress doesn't act.He was subsequently ordered to spend no more EPA time on climate change.
Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. "We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA," the report read.
The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from "any direct communication" with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: "The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."
More from the Wall Street Journal here.
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