EPA: White House Urged Changes to Report
Thu Jun 19, 6:52 PM ET
By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The White House directed a major rewrite of an
assessment of climate change, removing references to health and
environmental risks posed by rising global temperatures, according to
internal draft documents made public Thursday.
Several Senate Democrats, including some running for president, accused
the White House of "doctoring" the Environmental Protection Agency
report to suit President Bush's skeptical
views on global warming.
The report on the state of the environment has been an agency priority. It is
to be released next week before the agency chief Christie Whitman departs
on June 27.
According to EPA officials and internal documents obtained Thursday, most
of the original section on climate change was scrapped after the White
House directed significant changes and deletions that emphasized the
uncertainties surrounding the climate change debate.
The changes demanded by the White House were so extensive that the
climate section "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on
climate change," according to an April 29 EPA staff memo. It characterized
the revised draft as an embarrassment to the agency.
After months of negotiations with the White House, senior EPA officials
decided to remove most of the climate-related language. That would allow
publication of the rest of the report - on environmental concerns from air
pollution to the state of drinking water supplies - to go forward.
Copies of the draft documents and the EPA memo were made public by the
National Wildlife Federation, which obtained it through a former EPA
employee. The changes initially were reported in Thursday's New York
Times.
EPA spokesman Joe Martyak said the agency "didn't want to hold up the
rest of the report" because of the disagreement over the climate language
and because there remains no clear "consensus on the science and
conclusions" on global warming.
Whitman told the Times she was "perfectly comfortable" with the edited
version.
James Connaughton, chairman of White House Council on Environmental
Quality, said the editing amounted largely to removing redundancies or
inaccuracies that did not reflect what other reports had said. He said it was
wrong to say "that somehow we're trying to remove information about
climate. In the last year alone we've produced hundreds of pages on this
very subject."
According to the EPA papers, the White House deleted from a summary
under the heading of "global issues" the sentence, "Climate change has
global consequences for human health and the environment."
A number of scientific reports have raised those concerns.
The edited version inserted that climate change "may have potentially
profound consequences" but otherwise emphasized great uncertainties.
"The complexity of the earth system and the interconnections among its
components make it a scientific challenge to document change, document
its cause and develop useful projections on how natural variability and
human actions may affect the global environment in the future," said the
revision.
Connaughton said the original phrase misstated what the National Academy
of Science report on climate change had said.
The revised draft also:
_Removed a reference - and a graphic - to a 1999 study showing global
temperatures had risen sharply in the past decade compared with the
previous 1,000 years. Instead it cites a study, partly sponsored by the
American Petroleum Institute, that disputed those findings. Connaughton
said the second study was reputable and the most recent on the subject.
_Deleted a National Research Council (news - web
sites) finding that various studies have suggested that
recent warming was unusual and likely due to human
activities, although the same 2001 NRC report had
been commissioned by the White House.
Democratic Sens. Joe Lieberman (news - web sites) of
Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida, both running
for president, urged Bush to take action against "those
responsible for doctoring this report." They were joined
by Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., the ranking minority
member of the Environment and Public Works
Committee, in requesting copies of the various report
drafts.
"It brings into question the ability and authority of the
EPA ... to publish unbiased scientific reports," the
senators said.
Mark VanPutten, president of the National Wildlife
Federation, said the matter "provides disturbing
evidence of the administration's readiness to reject or
spin scientific findings on crucial environmental issues
that do not suit the White House's political agenda."
If the changes are accepted, the EPA staff memo said,
the agency "will take severe criticism from the science
and environmental communities for poorly
representing the science" of climate change.
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