How Scott Walker Dismantled Wisconsin's Environmental Legacy

I consider those who, for the sake of money, seek to damage the environment we depend on for life, truly evil, much much more than someone who does an evil act because they feel tormented by unhappiness and anger.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-scott-walker-dismantled-wisconsin-s-environmental-legacy/?WT.mc_id=SA_BS_20150619

By Siri Carpenter | June 17, 2015
Nick Ibarra contributed reporting to this article.

•••••

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has kept his distance from Adamczyk. It is easy to see why: Walker is widely expected to announce a bid for the Republican presidential nomination. And his environmental legacy—which so far has gone largely unexamined in the national press—has reached much farther than anything the board of a tiny public lands agency could accomplish.

Since taking office in 2011 Walker has moved to reduce the role of science in environmental policymaking and to silence discussion of controversial subjects, including climate change, by state employees. And he has presided over a series of controversial rollbacks in environmental protection, including relaxing laws governing iron mining and building on wetlands, in both cases to help specific companies avoid regulatory roadblocks. Among other policy changes, he has also loosened restrictions on phosphorus pollution in state waterways, tried to restrict wind energy development and proposed ending funding for a major renewable energy research program housed at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

•••••

Although some conservatives in Wisconsin praise Walker’s actions, he’s attracted the ire of others, including former Republican state senator Dale Schultz, who retired from the senate last winter after 32 years in the legislature. “I think what’s going on is appalling,” Schultz says. “As somebody who thinks that should be the first thing conservatives ought to be doing is protecting our environment, it’s embarrassing. I’m a pretty pro-business Republican. But a clean environment is essential to business. This is just wholly unacceptable.”

Schultz attributes Walker and other far-right Republicans’ policy positions to the demands of wealthy benefactors, especially those connected to the energy industry. “Some days I look at Governor Walker and I just see a guy who’s afraid of the mob,” Schultz says. “He helped create it, he fosters it, but then he’s also fearful of it.”

•••••

The Walker administration’s policy changes have been accompanied by efforts to weaken scientists’ role in policymaking. Even before taking office, Walker signaled his environmental agenda by appointing former Republican state senator and construction-company owner Cathy Stepp as DNR (Dept. of Natural Resources) secretary, explaining that he wanted “someone with a chamber-of-commerce mentality” at the agency’s helm.

•••••

Although DNR researchers haven’t been explicitly forbidden from mentioning climate change (as Tia Nelson was at the public lands agency until the board yesterday amended its policy to ban staff only from engaging in advocacy on climate policy), they nonetheless describe a “chilling effect” on discussion about politically controversial subjects. In November 2010 the DNR's main climate change Web page was a rich portal containing detailed information about climate trends, forecasted impacts of climate change and DNR programs aimed at addressing the problem. The page also acknowledged that "the most renowned group of scientists working on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stated that it is very likely [more than 90 percent probability] that human activity is responsible for rising temperatures." Today, the page contains a single paragraph describing, in general terms, a partnership with the University of Wisconsin to study the impacts of climate change and a link to the university’s project Web site.

The chilling effect is also evident in internal discussions, DNR scientists say. Sally Kefer, a land use expert who retired from the DNR in 2014, says that she encountered increasing institutional resistance to discussing climate change in the course of helping communities prepare for a warmer and wetter future. “I was being told to quit contacting the communities to determine their level of interest in having a discussion about climate adaptation,” Kefer says. “I was told to wait until they called me. And can’t I figure out a way to call it something other than ‘climate adaptation’? Can’t we just call it ‘sustainability’?” A current DNR scientist, who requested anonymity, says that the term “climate change” has become a red flag in internal grant proposals. “It’s impossible to work on natural resources without incorporating climate change in some way,” the researcher says. But “we’re less likely to cause problems if we just call it something else. ‘Environmental variability’is sort of our code word.”

Kimberlee Wright, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates, an environmental law center, works closely with DNR engineers and scientists to review and comment on pollution permits for activities such as wastewater disposal and groundwater pumping under the Clean Water Act. In the past, Wright says, the process was typically straightforward, and she and colleagues were routinely able to hammer out permits that followed the technical requirements of the law. But since Gov. Walker took office, she says, “We have not been able to settle one permit—we’ve had to litigate every single challenge. We’re often told by [DNR] staff, ‘We know you’re right, but you’re going to have to sue us because the people above me won’t let me issue a technically sufficient permit.’ That’s a really big difference—the interference in science-based decision-making is pretty complete.”

•••••

Walker’s 2015–17 budget proposal, which called for eliminating a third of all research scientist positions and more than half of environmental educator positions from the DNR, would dramatically decrease the influence of science on natural resources policy and public outreach.

According to the state’s bipartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which provides fiscal information to the lawmakers, about half of the scientist positions Walker slated for elimination are federally funded.

•••••

Walker’s proposal to shrink the DNR’s scientific capacity appears to have been the brainchild of Tom Tiffany, a GOP state senator who is a longtime critic of the DNR’s science bureau. In May he confirmed on a regional radio program that he requested Gov. Walker cut the DNR scientist, educator and communications positions. Tiffany said he thinks the agency’s scientists have a wildlife management “agenda” that has driven the agency to mismanage the deer herd, curtailing sportsmen’s hunting opportunities. He has also said he believes the agency’s scientists spend too much time on controversial subjects like climate change, which he views as “theoretical.” (According to DNR records, just under 3 percent of DNR scientists’ work hours during the last fiscal year involved activities related to climate change.)

The DNR changes are “an assault on the science side of policy making,” says Curt Meine, a conservation biologist and biographer of conservation pioneer Aldo Leopold. “Wisconsin’s conservation has always been built on a broad public commitment to building and sustaining the health of the landscape and the inherent connection between a healthy economy and healthy land and waters,” he says. “We have a long record of bipartisan support for that. There’s always been tensions, there always will be tensions, maybe—but science has always been a way of talking across those divisions because everybody wants good information to make decisions. Now that legacy, fostered by the likes of Aldo Leopold and Gaylord Nelson, is eroding away.”