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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS