Blowing the whistle on climate change
The UK’s The Guardian is reporting Blowing the whistle on climate change.
In a letter (pdf) made public this week, former EPA associate deputy administrator Jason Burnett indicated that both the office of the vice-president and the White House Council on Environmental Quality have directly attempted to censor discussions of the consequences that global warming poses to human health.
Burnett says that the White House asked him not to send the endangerment findings, after he had already e-mailed them to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Upon realising the document had already been sent, Burnett says he received a “phone call from the White House” asking him to send a follow-up email saying that the document “had been sent in error”. Burnett says he “explained I could not do this because it was not true”. The White House decided not to open the e-mail, and it’s since been hanging out in the ether while the EPA and the White House continue to battle over whether their official rulemaking notice should reflect the scientific findings of experts or the White House’s ideological desires.
But Burnett spilled about more than just this recent scuffle. He also noted that in the fall of 2007, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Cheney’s office asked him to work with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to remove portions of a report detailing the threats that climate change poses to human health. The document in question was the testimony that Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, had prepared to give before the Senate environment and public works committee about the human impacts of global warming. After her testimony in October 2007, it came to light that the White House had edited it down from 14 pages to a mere four, cutting the six pages detailing the diseases and other health problems that would be exacerbated by a warming planet. Burnett’s letter this week was the first evidence, however, that the call for edits came directly from Cheney’s office, which he says asked him to “remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change”.
History will not judge the current US regime kindly. Lying, thieving, war-profiteering, racist freaks. It’s my sincere hope that Bush, Cheney and their dreadful cronies will all be held to account for their blatant crimes against humanity. There’d be a cell in The Hague for them if there was any true justice in the world. — DS
