Opinions
Trump isn’t even hiding his disdain for science anymore

By Robert Gebelhoff, Assistant editor and Opinions contributor
Oct. 23, 2019 at 5:00 p.m. EDT

As with other fact-based disciplines, science and President Trump have never gotten along well. His administration has particularly found itself at loggerheads with the evidence-based regulatory frameworks that keep polluting industries in check. Given these disagreements, one might think the administration would offer at least a symbolic gesture of openness to independent academics.

But this is Trump we’re talking about. This week, the White House finally announced initial appointments to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and — to no one’s shock at all — it’s overwhelmingly dominated by industry interests. The message the White House is sending once again is clear: This is an administration of business, not science.

Of the seven announced members on Trump’s council, only one — K. Birgitta Whaley, an expert in quantum physics at the University of California at Berkeley — works at an academic institution. Two don’t have doctoral degrees, The Post reported Tuesday.

The most troubling of the new members is A.N. Sreeram, chief technology officer at Dow Chemical, a company that has already played an unseemly role in the Trump administration. The chemical company donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration funds, and its then-chief executive, Andrew Liveris, served as an adviser to the president early in the administration and helped develop a 2017 executive order directing government agencies to evaluate federal regulations that were supposedly “punishing companies.” Later, the administration reversed course on a proposal to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide then produced by Dow Chemical, despite conclusions from the Environmental Protection Agency that it has harmful effects on children’s brain development.

Sreeram himself has made alarming statements. Last year, he said in an interview with the Economic Times that lithium ion battery-powered cars were a “fad,” downplaying the threat of global warming and promoting diesel-fueled vehicles. “I am glad that the globe is warming, because Michigan was under 2 km of snow 12,000 years ago,” Sreeram said.

Sreeram declined to comment for this article, though a representative from Dow Chemical said the quote doesn’t reflect the views of the company.
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Robert Gebelhoff is an assistant editor for The Post's Opinions section. He has been with The Post since 2015. Follow https://twitter.com/RobertGebelhoff