Jul 8, 2008 9:37 am US/Pacific
Cheney Sought Cuts In Climate Testimony
WASHINGTON (AP) ―
Vice President Dick Cheney's
office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the
presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid
regulating greenhouse gases, a
former EPA officials maintains.
When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by
the head of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention last October, the White House insisted the changes
were made because of reservations raised by White House advisers about the accuracy of the
science.
But Jason K. Burnett, until last month the senior adviser on climate change
to Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Stephen Johnson, says that Cheney's office was deeply
involved in getting nearly half of the CDC's original draft testimony removed.
"The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president
were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony (concerning) ... any discussions of
the human health consequences of climate change," Burnett has told the Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee.
The three-page letter, a response to an inquiry by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the panel's chairwoman,
was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Boxer planned a news conference
later in the day.
Burnett, 31, a lifelong Democrat who resigned his post last month as
associate deputy EPA administrator because of disagreements over the agency's
response to climate change, describes deep political concerns at the White
House, including in Cheney's office, about linking climate change directly to
public health or damage to the environment.
Scientists believe manmade pollution is warming the earth and if the process
is not reversed it will cause significant climate changes that pose broad public health problems from increases in disease to
more injuries from severe weather.
Senate and House committees have been trying for months to get e-mail
exchanges and other documents to determine the extent of political influence on
government scientists, but have been rebuffed.
The letter by Burnett for the first time suggests that Cheney's office was
deeply involved in downplaying the impacts of climate change as related to
public health and welfare, Senate investigators believe.
Cheney's office also objected last January over congressional testimony by
Administrator Johnson that "greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment."
An official in Cheney's office "called to tell me that his office wanted the
language changed" with references to climate change harming the environment
deleted, Burnett said. Nevertheless, the phrase was left in Johnson's
testimony.
Cheney's office and the White
House Council on Environmental Quality worried that if key health
officials provided detailed testimony about global warming's consequences on public health or the
environment, it could make it more difficult to avoid regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, Burnett
believes.
The EPA currently is examining whether carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, poses a danger to
public health and welfare. The Supreme Court has said if it does, it must be
regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Nowhere were these White House concerns more apparent than when CDC Director
Julie Gerberding, the head of the government's premier public health watchdog,
testified about climate change and public health before Boxer's committee last
October. The White House deleted six of the original 14 pages of Gerberding's
testimony, including a list of likely public health impacts of global warming.
The White House, at the urging of Cheney's office, "requested that I work
with CDC to remove from the
testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change,"
wrote Burnett.
"CEQ contacted me to argue that I could best keep options open for the (EPA)
administrator (on regulating carbon dioxide) if I would convince CDC to delete
particular sections of their testimony," Burnett said in the letter to
Boxer.
But he said he refused to press CDC on the deletions because he believed the
CDC's draft testimony was "fundamentally accurate."
Burnett, in a telephone interview, said he opposed making the extensive
deletions because "it was the right thing to do." He declined to elaborate about
White House involvement beyond
his July 6 letter to Boxer.
As a Democrat, Burnett, seems to have been an odd choice as a senior policy
adviser and key liaison with the White House in Bush administration's EPA.
Over the last eight years, he has contributed nearly $125,000 to various
Democratic politicians, starting with Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, according to
the Center for Responsive Government. He supports Democrat Barack Obama for president.
Burnett caught the attention of Bush administration insiders as a researcher
at the Center for Regulatory Study, a joint effort by the American Enterprise
Institute and the Brookings Institution, where he co-authored a number of
reports on regulation including one criticizing a ban on using cell phones while
driving and another criticizing the EPA regulation of arsenic as too expensive
with limited benefits.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
