Report links Cheney office, oil giant to global warming policy shift

A congressional investigation has produced new details on the degree to which senior Bush administration officials favored using the Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions — until pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, ExxonMobil and others in the oil industry led the Bush administration to change course.

A report by the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, issued today, supports the disclosure by a former Environmental Protection Agency official last week that someone in Cheney's office had a hand in the shift in policy.

Among the findings of the congressional investigation: There was wide senior-level support at the EPA for concluding that greenhouse gases are a danger to the public and that the EPA should regulate emissions — from vehicles, power plants, refineries and other sources.

That would have been a dramatic shift in federal policy, and it would have given the EPA a powerful hand in trying to limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases widely blamed for causing global warming.

Among those supporting this view, the report said, were Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and three senior White House officials: Deputy Chief of Staff Joel D. Kaplan; Susan E. Dudley, regulatory chief at the Office of Management and Budget; and James L. Connaughton, chief of the Council on Environmental Quality.

According to the House committee report, representatives of ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Assn. argued ...

... that the move would undercut President Bush's reputation as an opponent of government regulation. And, it said, F. Chase Hutto III, Cheney's energy advisor, supported their opposition.

The committee had been investigating the work of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for several months, including his role in stopping California from regulating vehicle greenhouse-gas emissions, according to report on CNN's website. Eventually, the investigation led to Cheney's office. "I don't accept their premise," Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said. As for the report that the oil industry had the support of Cheney's office in fighting new regulatory action, she said: "Frankly, that's ridiculous."

Committee Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in a news release: "This is the dysfunctions and motivations of the Bush administration laid bare. The fact that they can, with near unanimity, completely switch positions on global warming to please the oil industry is shocking, and yet disappointingly predictable."

— James Gerstenzang

Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

Comments

[Rick]

Why is everyone so suprised by this? I see stories like this and just shrug, its business as usual for the bush administration. I just want to know, is there someone I can go see that can make me forget the last 8 years of my life?

[Zia]

I wonder if you were to sprinkle salt on Dick Cheney whether it would cause him to go limp and shrink, like it does with most species of slugs.

[dae]

Sometimes I feel like what a Russian must have felt before the collapse of the Soviet Union

[Bradley Frames]

Thank god only 5 months left to go. I only hope there will be a country and a world left to destroy !

[Elton]

Wouldn't it be great if there was something people could do about it? Like if collectively everyone could get together somehow and install a different leader who wouldn't bugger things up? Too bad there's no way to do that. But at least we still have freedom. Yaaay, freedom!

(Disclaimer: "freedom" does not apply to people being held without charge under the patriot act, gay people who want to marry, anyone who wants to bring shampoo on a plane, people who understand the fourth amendment, people who don't want to be spied on by the government, people who want to sue telecoms for aiding government spying, enemy combatants (formerly known as "soldiers") who fight in a war on the other side, service members, anyone who has been selected for jury duty, 18 year old males who haven't yet registered for selective service, victims of imminent domain, unmarried couples living together in certain southern communities... )

[George]

Eventually we will get to realize that many actions taken by the Bush administration were directly related to the benefits of the oil companies. How far does it go - we can't tell right now, but consider these assumptions: was the war in Iraq started to enable friendly companies to benefit from the exploitation of the Iraq oil!? Is the political wrangling with Iran aimed at increasing the oil price for the benefit of friendly oil companies? The recent lift of the ban for oil exploitation on the US coast certainly benefits the oil companies. Everything that the Bush administration has done, including some very unpopular and bad moves, has played in favor of the oil industry; the question remains: how much of this was a coincidence. I would urge the Congress to spare no resources in investigating this, for the sake of the protection of the basic principles of government.

[Xavier]

Cheney/Bush have almost destroyed the US. Certainly our reputation, put us behind the eight ball with the environment-all in the name of greed. Get fired up people and call your US Senators, Representatives etc. We have 5 more months in which this horrible administration can do a lot more destruction!

[Viet Tran]

Those who voted for bush, those in congress who refuse to do what they were elected to do (get bush cheney out of office) will be seen in a similar light as those who voted for Hitler into office and those who did not remove him from office. They are cowards who will not be looked upon with kindness in history. Pelosi and the other spineless Dems, will come to a rude awakening the next time we vote.

[Larry]

This administration was more about what my country can do for me. Than what I can do for my country.

[David Nicol]

It isn't too late to impeach Bush and Cheney. Let them leave office with ALMOST as much humilation as they have caused to the United States in the eyes of the rest of humanity. Anyone who ever voted for these monsters, shame on you.

[Joel Black]

Thank goodness for hard-headed realists like Dick Cheney. The real climate is not obeying the IPCC's model projections. I just hope more others in the political and scientific leadership can muster the courage to say that Emperor Gore has no clothes.

[Ronald]

There is a shocker...big oil and Cheney in bed together!!!

[madisonhack]

This is why Cheney's meetings on energy policy were kept a secret - the American public would have known then (8 years ago) what we certainly know now - that Bush and Cheney are in the pockets of the oil industry (duh) and we are taking it in the rear end so their pals can literally bankrupt our country with their insatiable greed. Impeach, indict, imprison...say I.

[Carl]

The TRUE American Trator................

[carl caroli]

I thought it was "for for the people, by the people", not "for the corporations by the corporations." It will take years to undo the damage done by these criminals. They should be punished.

[Reynolds L. Johnson]

The last of the 3 unclean spirits

[Not surprised]

With this administration, when it comes down to any issue that concerns the health and well being of the people or the planet, it has always been "Business as usual."

[Bobby Fontaine]

The particular emissions Cheney focused on not cracking down on was low level ozone causing nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds, which are caused heavily by adding ethanol to gasoline and producing it. Ethanol replaced an additive to gasoline called MTBE which the oil industry was behind starting the use of these oxygenates in the Clean Air Act of 1990. It causes the same emissions.

NASA’s two lead climatologists James Hansen and Drew Shindell say low level ozone pollutants and its formation are causing weather pattern changes we attribute to global warming, that they effect weather patterns as they’re emitted. The CO2 theory of Al Gore is a totally different phenomenon that’s only speculated on being possible. But they both agree that what we see as radical weather pattern changes today are the result of pollutants we can control easily.

Both have testified that the Bush administration has prevented them from publishing this information in a comprehensive manner for easy public consumption. I wrote the article below in response California passing greenhouse has regulations that didn’t adequately address this aspect of the global warming problem. Now I found out it was because Cheney wouldn’t let them.

If more Americans were better educated on details of the science and politics of global warming, they couldn’t not get away with what they do. But right now, even when they get caught, the details shoot over most Americans head, which is the fault of the press coverage of the issues where reporters listen to Al Gore instead of researching what the scientists themselves actually have to say.

Al Gore supported MTBE and ethanol but then I don’t see him promoting ethanol in his latest campaign to save the world. But then the ethanol we use now is anhydrous which is an oxygenate which pollutes and costs a great deal of mileage. Hydrous ethanol does neither and can be produced much easier with less harm to the environment. I bet Gore doesn’t even know the difference between the two.

California going wrong way with new pollution control measures
http://pr.cannazine.co.uk/content/view/422/27/

[j j smith]

Surprised? Nothing cheney does or has done surprises people who have real values. cheney lacks understanding of anything but $$$$$$$$$.

[kathleen]

I'm so angry I could scream!!!! So I'll go ahead and do that and then I'll vote for Obama.

[Brad]

You knowww the bush-cheney Administration is profiting from high oil prices. Your foolish to not realize this. Their main business interest IS oil company profits.
Now with the prices so high it just gives more of their oil buddies a better chance to win public approval to open offshore and previously hands off environmentally sensitive areas for oil extraction.
PROFIT$
PROFIT$
PROFIT$
For the G.O.P. (Grand Oil Party).
I can hear them now.
Heee, heee, heee, there's no stopping us now, we'll break this country til they're on their knees in fear begging for us to help them.
Remember folks Profit$ can buy a heckuva lot of Propaganda and Twisted Truths--a.k.a. LIES ;}.....

[Kerry]

Count down to Crawford? He's still got a little more than 5 months. Kind of rushing it aren't we? Hold your tails he'll be out soon enough..

Human global warming is bad science everyone... The Greenies are radicals that would use population controls to save a tree.

Everyone might want to examine where they're going to work and how much they'll have to pay for energy costs in their home when we let the EPA to use bad science to advance their agenda..

Global warming debunked
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/fallacies_about_global_warming.html

http://www.junkscience.com/

http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777

http://www.newsmax.com/brennan/global_warming_debunked/2007/10/30/45214.html

[Brad]

B.T.W... I totally agree with the Bush/Cheney Memorial.
Name a sewage plant after them. How better to show what they did to this country in the 8 years they had.
What a mess!!!
If ya don't think so, then ya haven't been paying attention or are awfully ignorant.

[Chuck]

One is hard pressed to locate a single instance in 8 years in which Cheney -- not to mention the squinting, suffocating princeling down the hall in the oval office -- has taken remotely accurate aim at anything at all. Their excellence seems minutely confined to the field of absolute adamance mingled with repellence to meaningful information, an Olympic-level balancing act at which they take an intimidating lead. Will anyone be able to take an adamant Republican leader seriously again? They haven't so much advanced their Republican agenda items as shone a blinding spotlight on the total disconnect between their own self-assurance about those items and any information whatsoever on which their positions could reasonably be based. It leaves Republicans in a horrific, untenable position, as a sort of national illiteracy/inumeracy club, cheering for the loudest leaders for the sheer noise to drown out doubt, and waiting for the next humiliating shoe to drop.

[Bert]

I wounder why when it is revealed that someone high up in our (thats right .... OUR ...... they are suppose to work for us) government cause actions to be in favor of big oil, insurance companies or other big companies, we seem so surprised. Have we in recent history had a farmer or common person run for president? The reason is that the farmer or common person, that have plain common sense, don't have the backing of these big companies. Just consider, why are they spending millions of dollars for a job that only pays $400,000 a year if they are not going to rip-off the taxpayers somehow? Think About It !!!!