Four Democratic senators called on EPA chief Stephen Johnson to resign yesterday: Barbara Boxer of California, who is chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. They basically accused Johnson of perjury. They also announced they’d asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to look into prosecuting him.
The Associated Press just published an internal memo the EPA’s chief of staff sent to managers telling them to not let staffers cooperate with the agency’s own inspector general but forward the info requests to him. In addition to the inspector general, employees aren’t supposed to talk to congressional investigators (!) or reporters (no “!”).
I spend a lot of time in Los Angeles, where the smog, as described by local troubador Beck, is “a giant dildo crushing the sun.” You forget about it for awhile, and then you look at the sky close to sunset, and go, wait a minute, why does God’s palette involve so much yellow and brown? The EPA released a document last week stating that because of climate change, those of you in the Northeast and the Midwest will soon have a clearer sense of what I’m talking about.
The EPA draft study states that simulations showed that in those regions, higher average temperatures will potentially lead to longer smog seasons and worse health threats for kids, the elderly, and people with respiratory issues.
Greater visible ecological damage in Midwestern swing states… Electoral boon for greens? Probably depends on how severe and well-publicized the adverse health effects, sadly.
Image: flickr/steven.buss
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. 
