Details
Cheney wanted cuts
in climate testimony
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
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
first obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
At a news conference, Boxer said the heavy editing of the
CDC testimony last October was "not haphazard" but part of broader
efforts to downplay the consequences of climate change. She said the goal was
to assure EPA's response to a Supreme Court directive to examine whether to
regulate carbon dioxide "would be as weak as possible."
Megan Mitchell, the vice president's press secretary,
dismissed the allegations by Burnett, whom she referred to simply as "that
Democrat."
"We don't comment on internal deliberations,"
said Mitchell.
Burnett, 31, a lifelong Democrat who has contributed
nearly $125,000 to Democratic candidates, resigned his post last month as
associate deputy EPA administrator because of disagreements over the agency's
response to climate change.
In his letter he describes deep 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.
Burnett at the news conference declined to elaborate, or
provide the names of the official who had contacted him.
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.