James Connaughton: The Bush Era Personified (by David Roberts at HuffPost)

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David Roberts
James Connaughton: The Bush Era Personified


Tim Dickinson has a piece in Rolling Stone on the Bush administration's coordinated attempts to stifle action on global warming, and it's worth a read. (Also worth checking out: the accompanying multimedia slideshow.) Lots of it will be familiar to Grist readers, but it's nice to see it pulled together into a single (extraordinarily damning) narrative.

One guy who plays a big role in the story is James Connaughton, the ex-dirty-energy lobbyist Bush brought in to head up the Council on Environmental Quality.

Side note: speaking of the CEQ, savor this:

Prior to joining the Cabinet, sought personal assurance from Bush that the EPA would be able to call its own shots without deferring to the CEQ - the Council on Environmental Quality, a policy arm of the White House. As Whitman recalls it, Bush made no effort to mask his bureaucratic ignorance. "What's CEQ?" he asked blankly.

Oy.

Bush was clueless, but Cheney -- to whom virtually all Bush era malevolence ultimately traces -- was not. He took the CEQ under his wing and made it his personal policy/propaganda shop, much like he did with the Office of Special Plans in the run up to the Iraq War. He used it to funnel favorable intelligence (read: bogus skeptic studies) up to the highest levels of gov't and out to the media, to interfere with scientific gov't reports, and to stymie executive rule-making. And of course Connaughton played along willingly. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-roberts/james-connaughton-the-bu_b_53441.html