Last October, when a high-ranked Center for Disease Control official was writing her testimony for Congress on how climate change affects human health, some individual—still unnamed—from the Office of the Vice President called up and told her to cut six pages of it. Which, apparently, she did. At least that’s what an EPA official has written in a letter to California Senator Barbara Boxer. 
That EPA man, Jason Burnett, said the reason was the administration’s steadfast rejection of any mandatory limits on fossil fuel emissions for industry. Cheney’s office feared that if the CDC made the link between global warming, caused by those emissions, and public health problems, they would be up against the wall in their fight against emissions regulation.
It’s not really news at this point that various appointees under the Bush administration have edited the findings of scientists for political ends; the documentary evidence for that surfaced years ago. This is interesting largely because Cheney, an old energy industry hand, seems to emerge as “the puppet master,” as one enviro put it today.
Can’t help but think of Metallica’s classic Master of Puppets. We environmentalists are going to have to compile a dictionary of terms we apply to people we don’t like. Karl Rove, you’ll recall, was “The Architect.” People who deforested the Amazon used to be called “slash and burn,” also Metallica-esque.
Check out The Washington Post’s coverage for more.
Image: flickr/World Economic Forum
July 8th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
It figures. The Cheney Bush Republican crime administration have been the biggest enemies of science. These are the kind of idiots who think that evolution or global warming is junk science but think that creation should be taught in schools.
July 9th, 2008 at 12:14 am
master of puppets was about out of control drug use, I believe you are referring to one of my other songs - Blackened from …and justice for all
July 30th, 2008 at 8:45 pm
[…] The alleged perjury took place Jan. 24th, when Johnson told Boxer’s committee he’d made an independent decision not to allow California to enact its own fuel economy standards that would be stricter than national ones. In reality, says the former EPA administrator Jason Burnett, Johnson seemed disposed to grant California at least a partial waiver, until the White House told him not to. (Here’s a previous post about Burnett). […]
August 20th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
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August 28th, 2008 at 4:34 am
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