EPA Ditches Climate Change in Environment Report
Resists White House Pressure
Published June 19, 2003
EPA Ditches Climate Change from New Report
Rather Than Accept Uncredible White House Edits
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The National Wildlife Federation has obtained an internal memorandum showing that the White House’s insistence on alterations to the global climate change section of a soon to be released Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report prompted the agency to delete the section to avoid responsibility for publishing information that is not scientifically credible.
“The administration must be held to account for its stewardship of the environment,” said Mark Van Putten, president of the National Wildlife Federation. “This document 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.”
The internal April 29 EPA memo reveals the depth of the agency’s concern with White House edits to the climate change section of the forthcoming Report on the Environment. Among the points raised in the memo are:
- After making “major edits” to the climate change section of the draft report, the White House informed EPA that “no further changes may be made.”
- In the White House edits, “The sections addressing impacts on human health and ecological effects are deleted.”
- As a result of the White House edits, the report “no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change.”
- “Uncertainty” is inserted by the White House edits “where there is essentially none.”
- After discarding conclusions in a 2001 National Academy of Sciences climate change report, the White House edits insert information from a “limited analysis” of climate change data that “supports the Administration’s favored message.”
“This is not an isolated incident,” Jeremy Symons, manager of the National Wildlife Federation’s Climate Change and Wildlife program, said. “It is a symptom of the White House’s increasing credibility gap on the environment.” He cited the administration’s recent refusal to release information on reducing toxic mercury emissions or to release an analysis of pending bipartisan climate change legislation.
The EPA memo sets out three response options to the edits: accept them, delete the section on climate change from the report, or to not accept the edits and attempt to reach a compromise.
While the option to attempt compromise “is the only approach that could produce a credible climate section” in the report, according to the EPA memo, “It may antagonize the White House more than the other two options.”
While accepting the edits “is easiest in terms of EPA-White House relations,” the memo states, “EPA will take responsibility and severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science.”
The option to delete the climate change section from the report, the memo states, “may be the only way to meet both White House and EPA needs,” and was the course ultimately adopted.
The memo notes the White House edits resulted from “a multi-month negotiating process,” clearly indicating the dispute did not involve an early, rough draft but one that had been in development for some time.
“It is particularly disturbing that this latest attempt to fuzz over the science comes as the Senate prepares for an historic vote to reduce pollution that causes global warming,” Symons said, in reference to an amendment Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) intend to offer to pending national energy legislation.
With EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman set to step down June 27, the evidence provided by the document “makes it all the more incumbent that the next EPA administrator must be willing to take a principled stand to defend EPA’s credibility and sound science in the face of White House political censors,” Van Putten said.
The nation’s largest member-supported conservation education and advocacy group, the National Wildlife Federation unites people from all walks of life to protect nature, wildlife and the world we all share. The Federation has educated and inspired families to uphold America’s conservation tradition since 1936.
Contacxt: Jeremy Symons - 202-939-3311 or Ben McNitt - 202-797-6855
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