Global Courant
EXCLUSIVE: A government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint Tuesday morning against Presidential Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry, alleging he was spreading misinformation about climate change.
In its complaint, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) alleged that Kerry violated federal science integrity policies — which require officials to accurately communicate scientific information based on the best available evidence — when he said in May that greenhouse gas emissions affect 15 million people. kills per year. worldwide. PPT requested a federal investigation into Kerry’s comments.
“Every year around this planet, 15 million people die due to greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, into the air that travel and waste in the form of pollution and the ocean is warming at a record rate, altering the chemistry of the ocean itself” Kerry noted May 10 at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit.
“Without action, millions of lives and the livelihoods of the planet are at risk,” he said.
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Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks at the AIM for Climate Summit in Washington, DC, on May 10. (AIM for Climate Summit)
Kerry later added that in addition to the 15 million people who die due to the “lack of quality” air, an additional 10 million people worldwide die each year due to extreme heat.
However, the PPT’s complaint sent to the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General on Monday noted that Kerry’s numbers exceeded the death toll being attributed to greenhouse gas emissions seem to significantly exaggerate.
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According to Lancet Countdown and Climate Vulnerable Forum data presented at the United Nations Climate Summit in November, climate change is expected to cause 3.4 million deaths by the year 2100. incidence of mosquito-borne tropical diseases.
And a 2021 study from Harvard University, published in the journal Environmental Research, calculated that fossil fuel emissions are responsible for more than 8 million annual deaths.
Another analysis, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation’s Global Burden of Disease Study, found that 4.2 million people died each year from particulate matter pollution in the outdoor air.
President Biden and Presidential Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry will participate in a virtual climate summit on April 20. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“Despite the enormity of Mr. Kerry’s claim, he did not cite any scientific evidence to substantiate it,” the PPT complaint said. “There is also no clear scientific research to support the claim that 15 million people are currently dying each year as a result of greenhouse gas emissions – or any other cause of death being tracked.”
“Such blatant misrepresentation of scientific information to the public is inherently a threat to public trust and good governance,” it continued. “Things get much worse when such disinformation is used to publicly support sweeping policy changes, such as moving toward zero-emission agriculture, which would have untold consequences for the economy and the lives of the American people.”
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The complaint further stated that behavior such as Kerry’s “inevitably erodes public confidence in its scientific and administrative institutions” and harms the nation “by reducing science from a large, dispassionate instrument of public policy that transcends party lines to yet another other political football.”
Kerry, in Houston on March 6, is accused of violating multiple federal scientific integrity policies in the complaint filed Tuesday. (Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The PPT cited three policies: President Biden’s early 2021 memo on scientific trust; the OSTP Framework for Federal Research Integrity Policy published this year; and the State Department’s own scientific integrity policy — which the Department said would provide a mandate for officials, including Kerry, to accurately communicate scientific information to the public.
Biden’s memo dated January 27, 2021, states that his administration’s policy is to “make evidence-based decisions guided by the best available science and data.” The OSTP’s framework, published in January, emphasizes the need for scientific rigor in communications to the public. And State Department policy states that information shared by officials should be “representative of established scientific processes.”
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“The Biden administration promised a renewal of standards, a restoration of trust in government, and commitments to scientific integrity and reliance on science over politics in its decision making,” PPT director Michael Chamberlain told Fox News Digital. “Yet the most powerful officials are all too often the worst enemies when it comes to delivering on these promises. John Kerry’s recent claim of 15 million annual deaths from greenhouse gas emissions seems like a hysterical statement of the most dangerous type.”
“It appears to have been done completely without evidence — a phrase often heard by the American public when reviewing statements made by the previous administration — and intended to scare the public in order to advance a political agenda,” he said. “In short, it is exactly the kind of disinformation that the government and State Department’s scientific integrity policy was designed to prevent.”
Kerry’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Thomas Catenacci is a political writer for Fox News Digital.
