Over a year ago, in June 2005, the New York Times uncovered the fact that the White House hired [tag]Philip Cooney[/tag], a former lobbyist for the [tag]American Petroleum Institute[/tag], to be chief of staff of the president’s [tag]Council on Environmental Quality[/tag]. As part of his responsibilities, Cooney re-wrote government reports on [tag]global warming[/tag], editing out scientific conclusions he didn’t like, and substituting the conclusions of scientists with his own politically-motivated opinions.
It was one of the more egregious examples of Bush’s “hackocracy”: the [tag]White House[/tag] literally put a Big Oil hack on the public payroll to change government reports about [tag]climate change[/tag]. A year later, the scandal is finally going to get a closer look.
A [tag]House[/tag] [tag]committee[/tag] will examine accusations that political appointees in the Bush administration edited government reports on global warming to raise the level of uncertainty about research that points to a human cause.
The Republican and Democratic leaders on the [tag]Government Reform Committee[/tag] sent a letter to the White House Council on Environmental Quality requesting documents by Aug. 11 on the activities of Philip A. [tag]Cooney[/tag], a former lobbyist for the petroleum industry with no science background who edited climate reports while chief of staff of the environmental council.
In an interview with Greenwire (no link available), House Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. [tag]Tom Davis[/tag] (R-Va.), who agreed this week to look into the controversy, said, “I wouldn’t call it an [tag]investigation[/tag], I’d call it [tag]oversight[/tag].”
You can call it anything you want; I’d call it a step in the right direction.
Indeed, the Government Reform Committee held its first hearing on climate change in seven years this week, at which point Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) mentioned the review of Cooney’s work at the White House.
At the hearing, White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Jim Connaughton strayed from the party line. From the Greenwire article:
While not asked about the censorship allegations today, Connaughton testified that Bush has several times since June 2001 declared that the scientific debate on climate was over. “Humans are a part of the problem, and we need to just get on with it,” Connaughton said.
If only the president agreed with Connaughton’s conclusion, we’d see some progress.
Regardless, the fact that the House is even willing to review a serious White House controversy is a very pleasant surprise. I don’t want to get my hopes up — we’re bound to learn one of these days that the investigation will exclude some key detail, such as actually talking to Cooney — but my expectations have dropped so low, even the possibility of congressional oversight is now encouraging.
Post Script: By the way, what happened to Cooney after he was exposed? The White House forced him out of his post, at which point he quickly got another job at, you guessed it, ExxonMobil. Of course, since he was doing ExxonMobil’s work all along, the transition was pretty easy.