An agency spokeswoman, Kathryn Harben, said in a statement that the move was part of a broader reorganization within the agency’s environmental health division that pared eight programs to four.
The climate and health office is the agency’s only program meant to help state and local governments prepare for the health consequences of fiercer storms, longer droughts and other extreme weather events. It was also an important contributor to the National Climate Assessment, a landmark government report that detailed new health hazards related to rising greenhouse gas emissions.
The former head of the unit, George E. Luber, has been reassigned to the agency’s waterborne diseases unit. He also was the subject of a dismissal notice until this week, but the notice was retracted after lawyers for a nonprofit watchdog group said they were considering filing a federal whistleblower complaint. Asked about the retraction notice, which was seen by The New York Times, the agency declined to comment.
Lawyers for the watchdog group, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, accused the CDC and Prevention of retaliating against Luber for objecting to changes in the climate program, raising concerns the agency might be diverting funds intended for climate change work, and for refusing to keep a low public profile.
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The $10 million Climate and Health Program within the agency is funded by Congress and, under federal law, those funds cannot be diverted to other areas of research.
The lawyers said the White House itself did not target Luber or his program, but that agency managers feared his outspokenness would draw unwanted attention from President Donald Trump and others within his administration who reject the scientific consensus on global warming.
Kevin Bell, a staff attorney with the nonprofit group, said agency managers had hoped to reach a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Luber to keep the climate program and discussions of climate change below the radar during the Trump years but grew angry when he insisted on trying to keep those issues in the spotlight.
“George didn’t want to play ball with that strategy,” Bell said.
Luber, who holds a Ph.D. in medical anthropology, has worked at the CDC for 16 years and had spent the past decade leading the climate program. A prominent expert on the links between rising temperatures and problems like waterborne diseases or heatstroke, he had made several media appearances before the start of the Trump administration, including in a television documentary on the dangers of more frequent heat waves in which he flew over Los Angeles in a helicopter with actor Matt Damon.
The agency’s termination notice, delivered in October and withdrawn this week, accused Luber of submitting falsified timecards between 2013 and 2018, writing a book in 2013 without authorization, and improperly asking subordinates to give university lectures. The notice also cited an anonymous source who charged that Luber had been late to a presentation because of a hangover.
Luber, through his lawyers, denies all the accusations. Bell said that, until Luber received the agency’s termination notice, he had a spotless record at the CDC, had consistently been given positive performance evaluations and had never been formally or informally disciplined for any reason.
The agency’s media office, asked whether Luber was being targeted because of his personal style and whether he had ever been approached regarding allegations of misconduct before the termination notice, said it would not comment on a personnel matter.
The quiet downgrading of the agency’s climate office, meanwhile, appears to fit a pattern in the Trump administration.
One of the first things the president’s staff did when Trump assumed office was to strip the phrase “climate change” from the White House website. Over the past two years, the administration has rolled back dozens of regulations aimed at curbing rising emissions and repeatedly attacked the science of global warming. In November, Trump disputed the findings of the National Climate Assessment issued by his own administration, saying he did not believe the report’s conclusion that climate change will batter the nation’s economy.
Harben, the CDC spokeswoman, said the consolidation of programs within the National Center for Environmental Health, which was finalized this year, was meant to streamline work and allow for collaboration between researchers with different areas of expertise.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.