EXCLUSIVE: A government watchdog group filed an ethics complaint against Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry on Tuesday morning, alleging he has spread misinformation about climate change.
In its complaint, Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) claimed Kerry violated the federal scientific integrity policy — which requires officials to accurately communicate scientific information based on the best available evidence — when he said he said in May that greenhouse gas emissions kill 15 million people every year worldwide. The PPT demanded a federal investigation into Kerry’s comments.
“15 million people die every single year around this planet as a result of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, in the air that travels around and comes down in the form of pollution and is warming the oceans at record rates, changing the chemistry of the ocean itself,” Kerry said May 10 at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM for Climate Summit.
“Without action, millions of lives and the planet’s livelihood are at risk,” he said.
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Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks at the AIM for the 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 from “poor quality” air, another 10 million people die annually worldwide as a result of extreme heat.
However, PPT’s complaint on Monday, which was sent to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, noted that Kerry’s numbers appear to have greatly exaggerated the number of fatalities attributed to greenhouse gas emissions.
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According to data from the Lancet Countdown and Climate Vulnerable Forum presented during the United Nations climate summit in November, climate change is expected to cause 3.4 million deaths by the year 2100. The excess deaths are expected to be caused by an increase in the frequency of wildfires, heatwaves and higher. 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 Global Burden of Disease Study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, concluded that 4.2 million people die each year as a result of outdoor particulate matter pollution.
President Biden and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry participated in a virtual climate summit on April 20. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“Despite the seriousness of Mr. Kerry’s claim, he has not cited any scientific evidence for its basis,” the PPT complaint states. “There is no clear scientific research to support a claim that 15 million people currently die annually from greenhouse gas emissions – or any other cause of death that is tracked.”
“The blatant misrepresentation of scientific information to the public is, by its very nature, a threat to public trust and good governance,” it continued. “It gets even worse when such misinformation is used to publicly support sweeping policy changes such as efforts to reach net-zero emissions in agriculture, which will have untold impacts on the economy and the lives of the American people.”
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The complaint further stated that behavior like Kerry’s “inevitably undermines public trust in scientific institutions and their governance” and harms the nation “by reducing science from a great, hopeful tool of public policy that transcends party lines to another political football.”
Kerry, in Houston on March 6, is accused in a complaint filed Tuesday of violating multiple federal scientific integrity rules. (Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The PPT cited three policies — President Biden’s early 2021 memo on trust in science; the OSTP Framework for Federal Scientific Integrity Policy released this year; and the State Department’s own scientific integrity policy — which it said provides 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 framework published in January emphasizes the need for scientific accuracy in public communications. And State Department policy states that information shared by officials “must be representative of well-established scientific processes.”
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“The Biden Administration has pledged to bring changing standards, restoring trust in government, and commitments to scientific integrity and reliance on science in political decision-making,” PPT Director Michael Chamberlain told Fox News Digital . “However, its most powerful officials are often their worst enemies when it comes to keeping these promises. John Kerry’s recent claim of 15 million annual deaths from greenhouse gas emissions appears to be a ridiculous statement. of the most dangerous kind.”
“It appears to have been made completely without evidence – a phrase the American public often hears when evaluating statements from the previous administration – and designed to intimidate the public into advancing a political agenda,” he said. “In other words, this is precisely the kind of disinformation that the administration’s and State Department’s scientific integrity policies are intended to prevent.”
Kerry’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
