You may recall a story from October, when Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testified before a Senate panel on the impact of climate change on public health. Before Gerberding could talk to lawmakers, however, the White House altered her testimony. References to potential health risks were removed — one CDC official said Gerberding’s draft “was eviscerated” — and details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming were deleted.
That afternoon, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino denied heavy-handed editing, and said the White House merely decided that the CDC should focus on the “many … public health benefits” of global warming. (She wasn’t kidding.)
Perino added, “[I]n the draft there was broad characterizations about climate-change science that didn’t align with the IPCC. And we have experts and scientists across this administration that can take a look at that testimony and say, ‘This is an error,’ or, ‘This doesn’t make sense.'”
It was pretty obvious at the time that Perino was blatantly lying, but in case there were any doubts, the whole story came out today.
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.
Is it me or does Dick Cheney often seem like a cartoon villain?
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.
Two angles to keep in mind here. First, the White House insisted Gerberding’s testimony was edited for accuracy. That was clearly false.
Second, some may occasionally wonder if Dick Cheney’s reputation for malevolence is exaggerated. It isn’t.