Article Image

IPFS News Link • Trump Administration

Scientists Are Being Demoted By Trump Administration For Studying Climate Change

• http://www.trueactivist.com

Joel Clement has been a federal employee with the Department of Interior for nearly 7 years and was the director of the Office of Policy Analysis up until June 15, when he and several dozen other senior executives from the department received letters of their involuntary reassignment. Clement is claiming that this move was an attempt to silence him and other scientists by forcing them into jobs where they would have to quit and leave the department altogether.

Clement is a "scientist, a policy expert, a civil servant and a worried citizen" whose job, among other things, involved studying and speaking out against climate change and its effects on Alaska Native communities. In the months proceeding the reassignment, he had spoken fervently in public fora, conversations, and emails with the White House, urging them to allow funding for their relocation and making a point of noting that climate change was to blame.

The scientist was reassigned to the accounting office of the department, despite having zero knowledge or background in accounting. Ironically, his new job entails collecting royal checks from fossil fuel companies.

"It is clear to me that the administration was so uncomfortable with this work, and my disclosures, that I was reassigned with the intent to coerce me into leaving the federal government," Clement said in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

A few days after his reassignment, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testified before Congress and said that reassignments were going to be used to "reduce staffing." The idea is that the ridiculous reassignments will encourage executives to quit. Clement says that this is not only wholly wrong but also a colossal mismanagement of taxpayer money. With some of his colleagues being transferred elsewhere for assignments they are not a match for, on the taxpayer's dime, all to allegedly further the agenda of the Trump Administration.

Credit: Washington Post

As a result, Clement filed two complaints against the department: one was for discrimination and retaliation against the information he had been disclosing about climate change and the other was about the misuse of government funds and processes.

The scientist has also pointed out that much more distressing than the current state of his job and the government is the fact that the Alaska Native communities have no allies left in government to advocate for their livelihood. The communities, namely the Kivalina, Shishmaref and Shaktoolik villages, are dangerously close to washing away completely into the Arctic Ocean.


Agorist Hosting