Environmental Warning is Altered in White House
by
Andrew C. Revkin and Katharine Q. Seelye/ The New York Times
Thursday, June 19, 2003
"You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe."
"You take the red pill and
you stay in Wonderland and I'll show you how deep the
rabbit-hole goes."
- FAIR USE NOTICE. This document contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Chemtrailpatrol is making this article available in our efforts to advance the understanding of environmental justice issues, corporate accountability, human rights, labor rights, social understanding. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner
The Environmental
Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft
report next week on the state of the environment,
but after heavy
editing by the White House, a long section
describing risks from
rising global temperatures has
been whittled to a few noncommittal
paragraphs. .The report,
commissioned in 2001 by the agency's
administrator, Christie Whitman,
was aimed at providing the first
comprehensive review of what is
known about various environmental
problems, where gaps in
understanding exist and how to fill them. .
Agency officials said it was
tentatively scheduled to be released
early next week, before Whitman
is to step down June 27, ending a
troubled time in office that
often put her at odds with President
George W. Bush. .The draft of the
climate section, with changes
sought by the White House, was
given to The New York Times on
Wednesday by a former EPA
official, along with earlier drafts and an
internal memo in which some
agency officials protested the changes.
Two agency officials confirmed
the nature of the documents. .
The editing eliminated references
to many studies concluding that
recent warming is at least partly
caused by rising concentrations of
smokestack and tailpipe emissions
and could threaten health and
ecosystems. .Among the deletions
were conclusions about the likely
human contribution to warming
from a 2001 report on climate by the
National Research Council that
the White House had commissioned and
that Bush had endorsed in
speeches that year. .White House officials
also deleted a reference to a
widely cited 1999 study showing that
global temperatures had gone up
sharply in the last decade compared
with levels over the last 1,000
years. In its place, administration
officials added a reference to a
new study, partly financed by the
American Petroleum Institute,
that questioned that conclusion.
.In the end, agency staff
members, after discussions with
administration officials, said
they decided to delete the entire
discussion, including material
inserted by the White House, to avoid
criticism that they were
selectively filtering science to suit
policy. .Administration officials
defended the report and said there
was nothing untoward about the
process that produced it. .Whitman
said she was "perfectly
comfortable" with the edited version. She
said the agency had been working
for years to produce a comprehensive
analysis of several environmental
indicators in easily understandable
form for the public and that the
differences over climate change
should not hold up the analysis
of the nation's air, land and water. .
"The first draft, as with many
first drafts, contained everything,"
she said in a brief telephone
interview from CBS in Manhattan, where
she was waiting to tape "The Late
Show With David Letterman." ."As it
went through the review, there
was less consensus on the science and
conclusions on climate change,"
she said. "So rather than go out with
something half-baked or not put
out the whole report, we felt it was
important for us to get this out
because there is a lot of really
good information that people can
use to measure our successes." .
Similarly, James Connaughton,
chairman of Bush's Council on
Environmental Quality, said the
draft was shortened because "the
decision by EPA was to take it
out in favor of a reference to more
extensive documents." .He said:
"It would be utterly inaccurate to
suggest that this administration
has not provided quite an extensive
discussion about the state of the
climate.
Ultimately, EPA made the decision
not to include the section on
climate change because we had
these ample discussions of the subject
already." .But private
environmental groups sharply criticized the
changes. "Political staff are
becoming increasingly bold in forcing
agency officials to endorse junk
science," said Jeremy Symons, a
climate policy expert at the
National Wildlife Federation. "This is
like the White House directing
the secretary of labor to alter
unemployment data to paint a rosy
economic picture." .
Drafts of the report have been
circulating for many months, but a
particularly heavy round of
rewriting and cutting by White House
officials in late April caused an
eruption of protest among EPA
officials working on the report.
.An April 29 "issue paper"
circulated among EPA staff
members said that after the changes made
by White House officials, the
section on climate "no longer
accurately represents scientific
consensus on climate
change." .An "option paper"
circulated at the same time said that
the "easiest" course would be to
accept the White House revisions,
but that to do so would taint the
agency, because "EPA will take
responsibility and severe
criticism from the science and
environmental communities for
poorly representing the science." .The
changes were mainly made by the
White House Council on Environmental
Quality, although the Office of
Management and Budget was also
involved, according to several
EPA officials