Seeking to play down the effects of global warming, US Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushed to delete references about the consequences of climate change on public health from congressional testimony, a former senior Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official said.
The former official, Jason Burnett, said the White House had been worried that the proposed testimony last October by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) might make it more difficult to avoid regulating greenhouse gases.
The account, described by Burnett in a letter on Sunday to Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, conflicts with the White House explanation at the time that the deletions reflected concerns by the White House Office of Science and Technology over the accuracy of the science.
Burnett, until last month an EPA senior adviser on climate change, said that Cheney’s office was deeply involved in getting nearly half of the CDC’s original draft testimony removed.
“The Council on Environmental Quality and the office of the vice president were seeking deletions to the CDC testimony [concerning] ... any discussions of the human health consequences of climate change,” Burnett said in the letter.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Boxer went so far as to say that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino had lied about why the White House had pushed for the deletions. That prompted Perino to demand an apology from Boxer.
“I have never said such a thing about a fellow public servant, and I wouldn’t if I didn’t have all the facts,” Perino said from Japan, where US President George W. Bush is attending the G8 summit. “I think I deserve an apology.”
Burnett declined to comment beyond what he described in the letter and said he did not want to identify the people he had talked with in Cheney’s office or elsewhere at the White House.
“I’m not interested in pointing fingers at individuals,” he said.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Tony Fratto said the White House stands by its explanation for the deletions and noted that science adviser John Marburger had raised concerns.
Marburger issued a summary of his concerns at the time, but at a Senate hearing a few weeks later said he did not recommend deleting six of the 14 pages as was done.
Megan Mitchell, the vice president’s press secretary, dismissed the allegations by Burnett and said, “We don’t comment on internal deliberations.”
Burnett, 31, a lifelong Democrat resigned his post last month as associate deputy EPA administrator because of disagreements over the agency’s response to climate change.
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