The State Department fires remaining employees who worked on climate change

[muriel_volestrangler]

The State Department on Friday fired the remaining staff working in the office responsible for international climate policy, including annual U.N. negotiations related to climate treaties, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Most of the staff in the Office of Global Change had left voluntarily after President Donald Trump took office and moved rapidly to pull the United States out of international climate talks. Nearly a dozen people who remained on staff were fired Friday, and the office will be shuttered as part of the wider downsizing of the department, the people familiar with the firings said.
...
“The Department is undertaking a significant and historic reorganization to better align our workforce activities, and programs with the America First foreign policy priorities,” the statement said.
...
“U.S. leadership in the world is just so critical. To not have one of the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases — but more importantly one of the key crucibles of technology and innovation and new approaches to dealing with issues like this — participating is just a massive loss to the world, a massive loss to the issue,” Reifsnyder said.

https://archive.ph/llhHg (archive of Washington Post article

The Anti-Science party strikes again.

[patphil]

1. The Republicans who run things think that if they don't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist.

Real world facts fly in the face of that belief.

https://usafacts.org/articles/are-the-number-of-major-natural-disasters-increasing/

The sad, and dangerous, part is that when politicians deny climate change, and convince people that there isn't a problem, we get disasters like the Texas flood, where there was no preparation for it.
Of course there's more to that particular problem than just willful ignorance, but it lays the foundation for not taking action to protect against these kind of disasters.