TAKING PUBLIC SERVICE SERIOUSLY

Rod Schoonover quit. He was 10 years into a solid career as a Senior Analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the U.S. Department of State, and he walked away from it so he could tell the truth about the climate emergency’s effect on national security.

HIS JOB DESCRIPTION

“As an intelligence officer,” Schoonover said at a hearing before the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, “my job is to provide clear, objective, independent analysis to advance U.S. national security.”

The Trump administration wouldn’t let him do that job.

A GAG ORDER

A biochemist by training, he had prepared both oral and written testimony on the security impacts of the climate crisis, his report warning that those impacts are “possibly catastrophic."

But administration officials wouldn’t let him present his data for the record because that data didn’t square with the crisis denials of this president and administration.

SCIENCE, NOT OPINION

The data is all clear, according to Schoonover and just about every environmental scientist: “The Earth’s climate is unequivocally undergoing a long-term warming trend, as established by decades of scientific measurements from multiple independent lines of evidence. We see few plausible future scenarios where significant harm does not arise from the compounded effects of climate change. People’s choices in the present and future, however, dictate the magnitude of many factors.”

This is not opinion; this is analysis drawn from peer-reviewed scientific journals. But the current National Security Council characterized the analysis as “climate alarm propaganda.” An example of such “propaganda” in Schoonover’s report: “The Earth’s climate is unequivocally undergoing a long-term warming trend as established by decades of scientific measurements from multiple, independent lines of evidence.”

GIVING UP HIS CAREER / KEEPING HIS VOICE

Rod Schoonover ended his career in public service because he was ordered not to serve the public’s safety and security with the solid science he knows to be true.