In a summary posted to their website, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) said the documents show the DOE emphasized the process should be secret, despite the law requiring federal advisory committee meetings to be public. They also said the records show that group members “recognized their objective was to ‘call into question’ the basis for EPA’s long-standing determination that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health and welfare.”

Emails released by the EDF show group members discussing the fact that they barely examined human health or welfare impacts during the process. Internal reviewers at the DOE also identified many issues with the scientific rigor of the report, but their comments were mostly ignored.

“With court-mandated government disclosure of these records, it is clear that the Trump Administration unlawfully pursued a secretive effort to develop a fatally tainted report, abdicating its responsibility to protect public health and well-being,” Erin Murphy, EDF Senior Attorney and Director of Clean Air and Energy Markets, said in a statement.

Experts say climate policy rollbacks since Trump took office are likely to make it harder for farmers to grow food, threaten global food security, and lead to tens of thousands of premature deaths from pollution exposure. (Link to this post.)