Doremus, Holly2019-09-252019-09-252010-11-022009http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12424/175874"It’s no secret that the outgoing George W. Bush administration has been hostile to environmental interests. By all accounts the Obama administration will be different on that score (as on many others). Before it can concentrate on its own new environmental priorities, though, the new administration will have to root out the counterproductive work of its predecessor. To some extent that’s just politics as usual and expected. Some degree of “policy whiplash” legitimately accompanies every presidential transition. But this transition will be more complicated than usual. As it works to reverse a large number of specific Bush administration decisions, the Obama environmental team will also be battling a systemic problem at key federal environmental agencies. Career federal environmental scientists at both regulatory and research agencies are thoroughly demoralized, and a wide range of observers agree that science is not being used effectively in environmental policy decisions. The morale problem will be helped by case-by-case reversal of some of the most extreme Bush-era anti-environmental actions, but morale will not be fully restored until institutional systems are in place to make better use of scientific evidence and scientific personnel. That sounds easy, but it will take more than simply declaring a commitment to scientific integrity." (p. 1)engWith permission of the license/copyright holderethics of the scienceenvironmentPolitical ethicsMethods of ethicsEnvironmental ethicsResources ethicsArticle