The Trump administration really has its head in the sand when it comes to climate change. They continue to ignore the threat of climate change, no matter how many signs there are that it is rapidly worsening, while working to lift up the actions of industries that contribute to the worsening of our environment.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler downplayed the importance of climate change and denied its role in the Australia wildfires.

Wheeler: “Currently, around the world, 1,000 children die every single day from a lack of drinking water in Africa and Asia, all over the world. That, I believe is a bigger environmental crisis than climate change today because we know who those thousand children are. It’s different than looking at what the impacts of climate might be 50, 75 years from now.”

Wheeler: “No, I don’t think that the fires in Australia are directly from climate change, and I don’t think most rational people are saying that either.”

Steve Mnuchin dismissed concerns about climate change, particularly among young people, and insinuated that only people with college degrees in economics should comment on climate change.

Mnuchin: “Is she the chief economist, or who is she? I’m confused. It’s a joke. After she goes and studies economics in college she can come back and explain that to us.”

Mnuchin: “The youth needs to understand, climate is one issue that needs to be put in context with lots of other things. … [T]his is not the doom and gloom issue, okay, that is going to impact everybody in the next ten years.”

Trump’s Department of Interior manipulated wildfire science as a justification to ignore climate change and promote logging.

The Guardian: “‘Blatant manipulation’: Trump administration exploited wildfire science to promote logging”

The Guardian: “The records offer a look behind the scenes at how Trump and his appointees have tried to craft a narrative that forest protection efforts are responsible for wildfires, including in California, even as science shows fires are becoming more intense largely because of climate change.”

The Department of Health and Human Services decried a recent climate protest as a “mass disruption” in an email to staff while lifting up the March for Life protest in a separate email.

Politico’s Dan Diamond: HHS sent an email to staff saying a climate protest would cause “mass disruption” and bring D.C. “to a gridlocked standstill” even though they noted “there is no known impact” to the HHS building.

Politico: “A department-wide HHS email on Thursday also promoted the March for Life as ‘the largest annual human rights demonstration in the world.’ Abortion-rights advocates said they were taken aback by the language choice; Ilyse Hogue, the head of NARAL, called it ‘some serious Handmaids Tale stuff.’”