Indoor air pollution from cooking indoors, Ethiopia
Credit: Verena Brinkman/Giz

President Donald Trump’s political appointees at the Environmental Protection Agency are killing grants and awards that mention “climate change,” no matter how effective the initiatives might be in cutting costs, creating jobs, and saving lives.

Under Administrator Scott Pruitt, who rejects the scientific consensus on climate change, the EPA has taken the unprecedented step of “putting a political operative in charge of vetting” hundreds of millions of dollars in annual EPA grants, the Washington Post reported Monday. That operative is John Konkus, “a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience.”

Some of EPA’s choices seem petty and capricious — like killing a $20,000 grant to help train Flint, Michigan residents, who are still dealing with a prolonged lead contamination crisis, to deal with bedbugs.

But “Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for ‘the double C-word’ — climate change,” the Post reports. Here is where things get both ridiculous and tragic: “Two of the awards the EPA’s leadership rescinded… supported the deployment […]