In the war against carbon-based energy, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plays a major role. Not only does it dispose of massive grants to approved climate research scientists, it hosts a bureaucracy that has grown into an empire of about 15,000 people, safe in their jobs, with ironclad pensions, and all entirely salaried with taxpayers’ money. If any state department can be said to be "captured", the EPA is the one to study. Under successive Democratic Party administrations, it has enjoyed a fireproof status, immune from staff or budget constraints. But now the sky has fallen in. There is going to be a Republican administration and the US president will be Donald Trump, a climate change "denier" if ever there was one. Worse, the president-elect has appointed a new political head of the EPA who is also a denier.

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