Resisting what is widely feared to be a “climate purge” of government employees who have studied global warming and other environmental policies under U.S. President Barack Obama, the Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed Tuesday that it would not be releasing individual names to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team.
“There is major concern amongst my members,” Jeff Eagan, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) chapter at the DOE’s Washington headquarters, told the Washington Post. “I have received lots of calls, emails, messages expressing shock and dismay.”
The outcry was in response to an internal memo, made public last week, in which the transition team submitted 65 questions to the DOE—a number of which sought specific information on “employees and contractors who attended United Nations climate meetings, along with those who helped develop the Obama administration’s social cost of carbon metrics, used to estimate and justify the climate benefits of new rules,” as Bloombergreported at the time.