So much for wanting to spend more time with his family. Last week we learned that Philip Cooney, a former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute but hired to be chief of staff of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality, was asked to re-write a government report on global warming, editing out scientific conclusions he didn’t like. A few days later, when they hoped no one was looking, the Bush gang forced Cooney out.
A few days later, Cooney has landed safely on his feet, benefiting from an oil-laden parachute.
Philip A. Cooney, the former White House staff member who repeatedly revised government scientific reports on global warming, will go to work for Exxon Mobil this fall, the oil company said yesterday.
Of course he will. The nation’s biggest oil company and most aggressive opponent of global warming needs people to advance its agenda. Given a chance to hire an oil lobbyist who edited out inconvenient facts for the White House, who else would ExxonMobil want? It’s a match made in … somewhere unpleasant.
The real problem, as Think Progress noted, is not just that Cooney is using a revolving door to go from the White House to ExxonMobil, it’s that Cooney has been working indirectly for ExxonMobil’s agenda all along. As Judd Legum put it, “The taxpayers were just taking care of his salary for the last few years.”