Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'
- Apocalypse Fairly Soon: The Moment of Truth in Europe
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement
- NDAA's 'Indefinite Detention' Provisions Unconstitutional, says Judge
- Preying on Poverty: How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks
- Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'
- The Rise of the New Economy Movement
- Preying on Poverty: How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks
- The Organic Watergate: Alarming Report Reveals USDA's Cozy Relationship with Corporate Agribusinesses in 'Organics'
- Updated: Under Pressure, TED Releases 'Income Inequality' Talk
Popular content
Today's Top News
Dems: White House Must Publish 'Chilling' Climate Change Document
WASHINGTON - The row over US inaction on carbon emissions reached new heights yesterday after the White House allowed Congress to look at last year's government proposal to officially deem climate change a threat to public health - a plan that aides to George Bush refused to acknowledge or read.
The climate plan was finished in December by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to a supreme court ruling that required the Bush administration to state whether carbon emissions should be regulated to protect public health.
The EPA concluded that regulation was needed, but whistleblowers have revealed that the White House ordered the agency to scrap its proposal. Democratic attempts to investigate the backroom dealings were stymied until this week, when senators were finally permitted a look at the plan.
The chairman of the Senate environment committee, California Democrat Barbara Boxer, released a summary of the proposal to reporters. Boxer was allowed to take notes on the plan but not given a copy.
"Based on the evidence before him, the [EPA] administrator believes it is reasonable to conclude current and future emissions of greenhouse gases will contribute to future climate change," the proposal stated.
"The US has a long and populous coastline," the EPA continued. "Sea level rise will continue and exacerbate storm surge flooding and coastline erosion ... in areas where heat waves already occur, they are expected to be more intense, more frequent, and longer-lasting."
The EPA proposal also predicted that warming temperatures would lead to more wildfires in western US states and "additional strain" on already overtaxed water resources in the dry south-east and western regions.
Democrats asked the EPA administrator, Stephen Johnson, to testify next week at a hearing exploring allegations of White House obstruction on climate change. But Johnson refused, citing executive privilege and forcing the cancellation of the hearing.
"The American people are poorly served by an administration whose head of environmental protection cannot appear before a Senate committee and honestly discuss what he did and why he did it," senior Democrat Patrick Leahy said.
The next step may be holding Johnson in contempt of Congress, which would effectively move the dispute into the judicial system. White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former Bush counsellor Karl Rove were found in contempt last year after refusing to cooperate with a different investigation, but their case has yet to move forward.
Boxer decried the White House's decision not to release the full EPA proposal to the public.
"It is clear. It is chilling. It is detailed," she said to colleagues yesterday. "That information belongs to the American people and we must get it to them. Then they will decide whether we should act to prevent this coming crisis or sit on our hands."
The EPA attempted to downplay the controversy in a statement to the Washington Post that called the proposal "a pre-decisional draft document" and "nothing new".
© 2008 The Guardian
9 Comments so far
Show AllGOOD BYE DEMOCRACY!
www.StudentsForTheEarth.org
Call congress. Any of them. Tell them they MUST stand up and begin to hold this administration responsible. The House Judiciary MAY have begun a long awaited process today but the Senate MUST also become a leading committee because the climate situation is urgent. Let's get them to use bothe and ALL barrells.
They need to hear from you. Call. Call. Call as many of them as you can.
People - Relatively few of us read these pages. So it's up to US to get the word out. Write brief letters to daily and local newspapers - this is the best, free way to reach regular people - telling of this report and use the word "chilling," and the quote from the Bush Science Advisor that "humanity is on a slippery slope to hell."
It's up to us activists to get the word out, not simply decry why others haven't yet caught on. They have, but do not know what to do about it.
Offer people something they can do without entailing becoming wild-eyed activists like those of us who read and comment here.......give them phone numbers of their congresspeople, their governor, their state legislature.
Again, it's critical to getting people involved to give them something they can do.
There are just no words evil enough to describe the pathology of George Bush or the cowardice of congress. It's increasingly looking like the path of death is the only way out. I suppose it's a reasonable ending to a genocidal beginning.
Does anybody remember the Horst Wessel song?
The US Supreme Count ruling which required EPA to issue a report on this matter, required it for public information purposes -- as per the EPA's statutory informational responsibilities to the public.
The report is a lawful, unclassified public document, for chrissakes; not a secret National Intelligence Finding, and certainly not the 'private property' of the White House!
NO claim of 'executive privilege' can legally supervene the EPA's statutory duties to the public in this instance.
Yet, behold: the EPA report was completed in December '07 and the Bush administration (successfully) illegally ordered it to remain off limits to the public.
And, once again as elsewhere, what does the congress do? -- It merely "decries" the administration's brazen illegality and wrings its hands.
F--k your fatuous handwringing, Pelosi and Reid!
F--K your open complicity with a brazenly criminal presidency.
YOU 'lawmakers' must ORDER the Executive to make the report public, IMMEDIATELY, by congressional resolution.
...And if doing your duty in this regard precipates what the Empirists will doubtless call a 'constitutional crisis,' then try to get you heads out of your butts and realize -- the constitutional crisis is already 6 years old and fatally deepening -- thanks to YOU in congress.
You rotten cowardly stinkers.
Please remember that Bush's own Climate Science advisor was quoted as saying "Humanity is on a greased slope to hell" when it came to climate change.
But to have that quote make it into the main stream press when the Official Position is 'rose colored glasses for everyone!' just doesn't cut it.
SCIENTIFIC BETRAYAL:
Never before have Americans experienced such dangerous manipulation of essential scientific data, as used by this administration to derail vital environmental reforms, conservation, family planning-- and the list goes on. The resulting long term environmental and social damage are beyond measure, and can only worsen if not curtailed.
Despite their clandestine cloak, or environmental friendly disguise, these sellouts have been evident since Bush first was handed the presidency. They have been exposed by defectors from the EPA, health & human services, etc; and have been documented and chronicled by numerous dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists.
The gravity of these unprecedented betrayals eclipses the Monica Lewinski scandal which led to an impeachment, and pose greater dangers than Watergate which terminated a presidency.
Blame for these dreadful consequences falls mainly on the five supreme court justices who placed politics ahead of the law and put him in office against the voters choice; our legislators for allowing such reckless and dangerous behavior from this unlearned president guided by his financial and radical supporters; and especially the apathetic populace for tolerating this unprecedented outrage
Prosecute Chairman Crunk and the politicians who accept his crude crunk money. Prosecute all of them for actively propagandizing and lying to everyone over the past 2 decades, deceiving us of the true cost of letting them do business.