Opinion: The administration tried to muzzle this scientist on climate change. But he won’t go away.
By Karen Tumulty Karen Tumulty Columnist covering national politics Email Bio Follow Columnist May 22 at 3:06 PM “I never wanted to be here. I don’t think I want to be here. I am frightened to be here.”
A researcher with the agency for 17 years, Luber focused on how a hotter planet will affect human health — including the potential for long heat waves that could kill tens of thousands and the likely spread of mosquito-borne diseases as waters where the insects breed grow warmer. Among climate scientists, Luber was something of a rock star, appearing with Matt Damon in Showtime’s “Years of Living Dangerously” series and frequently sought for media interviews and speeches.
What is known is that Luber’s situation began to change shortly after the 2016 presidential election, which put Donald Trump, a vocal skeptic of climate science, in the White House. Within moments of Trump becoming president, references to confronting “climate change” disappeared from the White House website. Luber says the stifling effect became apparent at his own agency when one of his bosses asked him to refrain from using the phrase.
Luber, however, was not able to stop the CDC from quietly folding his 18-person program into a much larger section of the agency that studies asthma. He had protested that this was contrary to the wishes of Congress, which appropriated funds specifically for climate study. He also warned that researchers assigned to the new division would inevitably get diverted to other projects.
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