EPA Drops Support for Annual Climate Leadership Awards
Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has dropped support for an award to honor voluntary initiatives made by companies against global warming, as the agency announced on Friday, Aug. 25.
The move is just one of several that the agency, led by Administrator Scott Pruitt, has made to undo climate change programs and initiatives started during Barack Obama's term. Pruitt himself has been heard during several occasions to have expressed his doubts about climate change, as Reuters noted.
The EPA is no longer sponsoring the Climate Leadership Awards program and its events, as the agency announced via email on Friday. Before last week, the EPA has been the primary sponsor of the award program.
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The agency's website confirms as much, as a new header announces the change on EPA's Climate Leadership Awards web page. The agency has decided to cancel their support for the 2018 awards, including "canceling the 2018 Climate Leadership Awards as well as EPA's sponsorship of the Climate Leadership Conference," according to their update.
The 2018 ceremonies were supposed to be given out in Denver in a conference between Feb. 28 and March 2 next year — an event that the agency spends about $24,950 annually in sponsorship, travel and salary costs. The EPA has been the lead sponsor for the event since 2012.
Jahan Wilcox, the spokesman for the agency, commented that "It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that we don't plan to fund an awards ceremony on climate change," perhaps referring to the EPA's recently downsized budget.
The allocation for the EPA took the largest hit in the Trump administration's budget proposal for 2018. The 31-percent budget cut remains a plan that both Republican and Democratic lawmakers noted in protest.
The other sponsors of the award plan to pick up the slack, as C2ES and the Climate Registry announced that they will continue to support the awards, hopefully with the help of new partners willing to fund the conference next year.
