The Role of Climate Change Deniers in the “Resignation” of Christine Whitman

[Time for change]

Christine Todd Whitman “resigned” as the administrator of the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) almost seven years ago. The incident remains as relevant today as ever because of what it tells us about how corporate funded climate change deniers continue to block action to ameliorate global warning, through massive propaganda and lobbying campaigns.


Christine Whitman’s EPA on climate change

In early 2002 the EPA came out with their “Climate Action Report 2002”. A subsection of the introduction of the report, titled “The Science”, began:

Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise…

Greenpeace summarized the gist of the report:

The report forecast major impacts on the continental United States as well as the submersion of barrier islands, and called for action to minimize the economic consequences of these events…

Andrew Revkin commented in the New York Times:

In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration for the first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But while the report says the United States will be substantially changed in the next few decades… "very likely" seeing the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes, for example… it does not propose any major shift in the administration's policy on greenhouse gases.

Pressure by climate change deniers and Bush’s disavowal of his own EPA’s report

Though the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) claims to be an organization “whose research on public policy reflects the principles of free enterprise, individual liberty and limited government”, it is one of the premier climate change denial organizations in the world. Its major funding sources have included ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Dow Chemical, General Motors, and Richard Scaife.

In September 2003 Greenpeace uncovered an e-mail from Myron Ebell of the CEI that was very revealing with regard to the influence CEI exercised on the Bush administration. The e-mail, dated March 2002, was addressed to Phil Cooney, a senior official at the White House Council for Environmental Quality. It began: “Dear Phil, Thanks for calling and asking for our help”. The Greenpeace article describes Ebell’s memo to Phil Cooney:

He describes his plans to discredit an EPA study on climate change through a lawsuit. He states the need to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think that they are serving the president's interests by publishing this rubbish." He notes his group is considering a call for the then-head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Todd Whitman, to resign, and openly suggests that she'd make an appropriate "fall gal" if the administration is serious about getting back into bed with conservatives opposing action on climate change.

This was followed in June 2002 by a letter to George W. Bush from the CEI and other climate change denying organizations expressing their concern over the EPA report:

In our view, Climate Action Report 2002 undermines your position on the Kyoto Protocol and damages efforts in the Congress to advance your energy policies and to oppose environmental policies that would implement Kyoto-style controls on energy use.

Apparently the report by George W. Bush’s own EPA came as somewhat of a surprise to him, and in any event the pressure put on him by the corporate funded climate change deniers had the desired effect:

It appeared to be a remarkable change in policy, espousing gloom and doom global warming scenarios that President Bush has studiously eschewed for years. Within 24 hours, though, Bush dismissed it as a "report put out by the bureaucracy," which it was, and "re-vowed" his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

The resignation of Christine Todd Whitman

On May 21, 2003, Christine Whitman announced her “resignation” as EPA Administrator. Though she cited personal reasons at the time, not many people believed that. But in a later interview with the Washington Post, Whitman was more forthright about her reasons:

It was (Vice President) Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed account so far of her departure.

An overview of the strategy of corporate funded climate change deniers

The Union of Concerned Scientists released a report in 2007 that pointed out the many strong similarities between the climate change denial movement and the movement to portray cigarette smoking as safe. The report was titled “Smoke, Mirrors, & Hot Air – How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science”. From their Executive Summary:

In an effort to deceive the public about the reality of global warming, ExxonMobil has underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry misled the public about the scientific evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease.

As this report documents, the two disinformation campaigns are strikingly similar. ExxonMobil has drawn upon the tactics and even some of the organizations and actors involved in the callous disinformation campaign the tobacco industry waged for 40 years. Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil has:

 Manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence.

 Adopted a strategy of information laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message and thereby confuse the public.

 Promoted scientific spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in their attempts to persuade the media and the public that there is still serious debate among scientists that burning fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and that human-caused warming will have serious consequences.

 Attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on global warming with misleading charges about the need for “sound science.”

 Used its extraordinary access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.

The report documents that, despite the scientific consensus about the fundamental understanding that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions, Exxon-Mobil has funneled about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue. Many of these organizations have an overlapping – sometimes identical – collection of spokespeople serving as staff, board members, and scientific advisors. By publishing and republishing the non-peer-reviewed works of a small group of scientific spokespeople, Exxon- Mobil-funded organizations have propped up and amplified work that has been discredited by reputable climate scientists.

Fallout

After doing what he could to blunt the impact of the EPA’s Climate Action Report 2002, Phil Cooney continued on in his role as corporate whore liaison to the Bush administration’ so-called Council on Environmental Quality. Susan George describes what became of him in her book, “Hijacking America – How the Religious and Secular Right Changed what Americans Think”:

He made hundreds of changes to various scientific documents, excising and softening them and adding weasel words like “potentially” or “might” where scientists saw certainty and direct human responsibility for climate change.

Eventually one of Cooney’s colleagues had seen enough and resigned over the Bush administration’s war against science:

In March, Rick Piltz, a former senior associate with the federal Climate Change Science Program, resigned from his job of 10 years… Mr. Piltz alleged in an interview that the government has "essentially suppressed the use of the most substantial scientific assessment undertaken by the program in its 15-year history." The administration was displeased with its findings, he alleged, so that the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change compiled by hundreds of U.S. scientists was sent "into a black hole," playing no role in strategy planning or reports to Congress.

Cooney resigned under the spotlight of negative publicity and was hired a few days later by ExxonMobil.

I’ve said before that I’ve known of a number of otherwise progressive people who have fallen for this corporate funded misinformation. This is testament to the extraordinary effectiveness of the lavishly corporate funded climate change deniers. The advice I have for these people is: Before believing or quoting sources that disagree with the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, please try to ascertain who funded the source.

Al Gore summed up the issue of corporate funded climate change denial and the consequences of failure to adequately address climate change in his book, “Our Choice – A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis”:

In our generation, the decision by powerful ideologues and self-interested corporate advocates to convert questions of truth into questions of power has produced a lassitude in reaction to genuine, fact-based warnings of an onrushing tragedy with no parallel in all of history….

Were we not to take bold action, the worst impacts of the climate crisis would unfold over many generations… But we cannot wait for the full fury of the crisis in order to mobilize a response, because by then it would already be too late… By that point, the generation that finally realized that humans had been condemned to endless degradation of their prospects for the entirety of their lives and the lives of their children and their children’s children would be justified in looking backward at us in our time as a criminal generation that they would curse endlessly as the architects of humanity’s destruction.

[secondwind]

1. bookmarked & kicked!

[pnorman]

3. Likewise, K & R!

n/t

[Faryn Balyncd]

2. k and r

[Overseas]

4. K&R.

Didn't realize the full story behind Whitman's "resignation."

Appreciate having the bullet points on Exxon Mobil's information laundering campaign.

We have seen all of those things in action and I regret that they have been so successful.

I also regret that our broadcast media are conglomerated into conservative hands, so the manufactured uncertainty is made to look far more widespread than it is.

And sad how those TV news chat shows were bringing on information launderers under the guise of providing balanced coverage-- got a climate change scientist on, so we gotta have a denier for "the other side" !! When they could be providing balance by having client scientists who have differing ideas about how to address the problems most effectively.

[Time for change]

22. Excellent point about our broadcast media

Our corporate media's opinion of whose opinions are acceptable for airing on their shows drive public perception to a large degree.

Against the Iraq War: Unacceptable

In favor of a real investigation of the 9/11 attacks or election fraud in 2000 or 2004: Unacceptable

Purveyors of corporate sponsored junk science: Not only totally acceptable, but no mention is ever made of where these people get their funding.

[Overseas]

28. Thanks. And your examples are great ones.

We are so boastful about our free press here in the USA, yet so many important stories just don't get covered-- or get sidelined to one mention so we can say we have covered them.

I'm glad I have access to international news programs in English. But it makes me wistful.

[Raine]

5. Very interesting

THANKS for posting this info. :thumbsup:

[rasputin1952]

6. Whitman, as Gov of NJ, was instrumental in getting some things...

done that affected the air and water quality of NJ.

Since major weather patterns generally move West to East, much of the acid rain produced by coal fired electrical plants came from right here in NE. The result was deforestation of much of NJ as the pollution produced in the Midwest moved on to the Eastern states. Many of her R policies were bad, but she was deeply concerned over the problems the nation asfar as pollution is concerned.

The idiot king gutted the EPA, OSHA, and a host of other Federal programs designed to curb abuses, all in the name of "business", Whitman was caught up in the whirlwind of stupidity and was seen as a barrier to what the corporatists and minions of unfettered business wanted to accomplish...(profit at any cost), and was expendable. She was one of the very few moderate, (and even fewer intelligent), people that came on board with bush. In 8 years the floodgates for profit, at the expense of of the environment jumped to levels far above what had been known previously. Lead and mercury levels were changed, dumping in streams and rivers was permitted and regulations, if not rolled back, were seen as encumbrances. The profiteers worked feverishly to increase their share at the expense of everyone else's health, and when Whitman stood up, she was told to leave.

The entire bush legacy is one of utter failure...and Whitman was the point guard of what would happen if anyone crossed the bastards.

[slay]

18. She also wrote a book about the GOP called "It's My Party Too"

i think she not realizes - it's not. least i hope so.

[rasputin1952]

20. She is a Moderate R...

try and find a slew of those...:rofl:

Seems like they've all been on a race to see who can be further Right than McCarthy...;)

[slay]

21. No kidding right? I actually kinda liked Whitman

but felt she was very out of place with current republicans and guess she finally did too. Heard her on Howard Stern one day years back where she promised to name a rest stop after him - which she did! Kinda sad when good people get tangled up in the big ball of crazy that is the current republican party. Doh.

[a la izquierda]

24. Good people, huh?

I guess you weren't a college student during her tenure. I thank her for a portion of my massive college debt...and I was a RESIDENT of NJ, going to a state school.

Republicans do not, I repeat, do NOT give a crap about education. I'm ignorant about her environmental policies, admittedly.

[name not needed]

25. And lest we forget this little gem...

[slay]

26. Well, good is a relative term in this case...

<-- See what I mean... :evilgrin:

[a la izquierda]

27. fair enough.

but warn me next time you're going to post caribou barbie. i have to prepare my gag reflex.

[slay]

29. lol

damn yeah you're right my bad.. my eyes are still burning from looking at it.. :P :rofl:

[brentspeak]

7. Well done post n/t

[Octafish]

8. Rove toadied to Big Oil, to her evident consternation.

Evil Brains rate above Enviro Beauty.

EPA Rule Loosened After Oil Chief's Letter to Rove

And from Whitman's memoir:

Here's another doozy: "Karl Rove told me ... that I would be one of just three cabinet officers who would help determine whether the president would be reelected. I took Rove to mean that the work I would do in building a strong record on the environment would help the president build on his base by attracting moderate swing voters. As it turned out, I don't seem to have understood Karl correctly."

SOURCE: http://www.grist.org/article/little-whitman/

PS: I can always tell a Time for change post. When I'm done reading it, I've gotten a lot of something most important: The Truth.

[Time for change]

17. Thank you Octafish -- I wasn't aware that she had written her memoirs

She was walking a tightrope between trying to do the right thing and trying not to be insubordinate at the same time. We need more like her in our government. It's sickening that our corporate media legitimizes the likes of Karl Rove by having him appear on news segments as some kind of expert -- while ignoring the fact that he's a psychopathic liar.

[Raster]

19. Your final post script comment sums it up most succinctly. Thanks for posting!

:kick:

[Raster]

9. Let's connect the dots further...

President Bill Clinton's second term in office saw the ground laid, research funds allocated and preparatory infrastructure created to support the almost-implied "green" Presidency of Albert Gore. Part of the Clinton legacy to the United States AND the world would be the United States finally taking the international lead and address global warming and the effect humans were having on this planet. Several long-range studies on global climate change began during Bill Clinton's second term, with the thought that they would reach fruition during the next President's administration. Studies which would not be friendly to the global petroleum mafia or the Military's death-for-profit machine. Studies that, if given the national attention they deserved, would cause most Americans to think about what was truly happening to the planet and the consequences of some of our actions.

Sadly, irregardless of the legal wishes of the electorate, the next presidential administration was already chosen years before the actual 2000 election. Forces that most Americans can barely comprehend had already plotted to insure that the next presidential administration was far friendlier to certain industries and far less regulatory. Chief among these forces were The Texas-American Petroleum Cartel, The American Military Industrial Complex and the group of barely-public, ultra-secret, black-funded intelligence entities that function as almost their own secret government. We naive, childish Americans look back at Selection 2000 with one scapegoat after another to blame for the Bush*/Cheney* coup of 2000. If it wasn't Nader, than it was Pat Buchanan or a butterfly ballot. In truth, it was truly none of the above. Actions had been taken in Florida YEARS before Selection 2000 to make sure that a number of dirty tricks played would give the impression of a Bush* win in Florida. Jeb Bush*, the notorious, cutthroat brother of George W.* had already been installed as governor of Florida. Changes were made at the republican-led state legislative level that (1) brought the authority for statewide elections under the control of the Secretary of State; and (2) made the Secretary of State an appointed, not elected, position. Kathleen Harris, republican stalwart, all around spoiled rich brat, and a member of the 'thuglican inner circle ran the committee to elect Bush*/Cheney* from her state offices, using state resources. Her office controlled the election infrastructure and had already removed at least 50,000 registered Democratic voters from the voting roles. And when every dirty trick was applied, and the votes were being carefully counted, the ace-in-the-hole was thrown on the table: a brutally partisan, republican-controlled, SCOTUS. In a ruling so illegal and unconstitutional that even the SCOTUS decreed it could never be used for precedent, the lawful and legitimate counting of the state's ballots were halted, to enable the coup to move forward and allow "the Machine's" hand-picked Manchurian candidates to seize control. And the rest, they say, is history.

Historians will spend years analyzing the actions and reactions of the Cheney*/Bush pResidential Administration. The two chief benefactors of the coup's largess were the Petroleum Cartel and the MIC, both of which could not allow the mountain of negative information to ever reach public ears. The same denizens had seen the American public's reaction years before when then President Jimmy Carter had warned of the dangers of petroleum dependency, and had begun the campaign to move the US from being petro-centric and dependent on fossil fuels. Fully three-quarters of the American public listened to Carter and believed in his vision. That is, until those same forces stepped in to use factions in the Middle East to their benefit: the Iran Hostage Crisis and the "gasoline crisis" of the late seventies--events completely manipulated to change public perception and support.

Once Cheney*/Bush* seized control, the wars on science, on reason, on justice and even humanity humanity reached a fever pitch. In one fell swoop, the United States went from being the largest benefactor nation to the largest terrorist nation. Treaties were abandoned. The United States removed itself from the International Courts and declared to the world: we are the new Rome. We will take what we want and do what we want and we shall answer to none. One of the first actions was to begin rewriting scientific evidence and historical record that did not jibe with the new Rome. Chief of these was science, and especially the evidence about global climate change. Phil Cooney--may he fry in hell a thousand lifetimes--a direct employee of the Petroleum Cartel moved into the White House at Cheney*/Bush* invitation, and began to rewrite, water down and obscure scientific report and study--one after the other--that did not best represent the masters of New Rome.

Make no mistake: the masters of New Rome have known about human-induced climate change for years. Years. Some of the most appalling climatic actions are happening right in front of us today, and will bear poisonous fruit for centuries to come. And the most mind-boggling fact: persons and parties have known of the dangers for years and have purposely done nothing. And worse, they had made sure no one else could do anything. And all for their continued profit and power.

The human race and this planet as we now know it, are facing an almost unfathomable "perfect storm." The main action of greenhouse gases inducing climate change is causing the polar ice caps to melt, the sea levels to rise and the delicate chemical balances of the land and sea to change. Many parts of the oceanic world--which we barely understand--stand at the cusp of collapse. With the melting of polar-region ice, we are beginning to see the release of phenomenal amounts of methane--one of the worst of the greenhouse gases--into the environment, possibly accelerating the cycle even further. And the destructive changes to the oceanic infrastructure are mirrored by equally destructive changes to the Earth's land. Entire swathes of the the world rainforest's, the so-called "lungs of the planet" are gravely ill, and the prognosis is not good. There are now areas of the fabled Amazonian rain forest that are dead and dying fast, becoming a type of desert we have never seen before.

"In our generation, the decision by powerful ideologues and self-interested corporate advocates to convert questions of truth into questions of power has produced a lassitude in reaction to genuine, fact-based warnings of an onrushing tragedy with no parallel in all of history….

Were we not to take bold action, the worst impacts of the climate crisis would unfold over many generations… But we cannot wait for the full fury of the crisis in order to mobilize a response, because by then it would already be too late… By that point, the generation that finally realized that humans had been condemned to endless degradation of their prospects for the entirety of their lives and the lives of their children and their children’s children would be justified in looking backward at us in our time as a criminal generation that they would curse endlessly as the architects of humanity’s destruction."

[Raster]

10. And yet again, Time for change, you have presented one of your impeccably written and sourced

essays. I have been a fan for years of what you've written. Your DU essays alone have been an excellent chronicle and analysis of our nation's Dark Ages--their cause and effect.

Thank you for this and others. Please, don't stop.

I would recommend this and kick it a thousand times if I could.
:kick:

[Time for change]

15. Thank you very much Raster

and very nice discussion of the challenges we face in post # 9, above.

[nxylas]

11. But I thought big government was paying scientists to push the warmist agenda

The deniers are always telling us that government needs global warming as a pretext for acting all governmenty, and that's why a scientist can't get grant money if he questions the new religion of global warming. Ask them how they square this with the Bush administration's denialism and they do what they always do when faced with an inconvenient truth - change the subject and turn up the volume.

[Ikonoklast]

12. What we are witnesses to are the last days of fossil fuels.

Not only because of increasing scarcity and the soon coming prices for cheap petroleum rising exponentially, but the increasingly mounting evidence that the use thereof will kill us all.


The Bush Cartel was the last gasp of the Oil Oligarchy as they shot their wad funding wars for the control of all significant crude resources in the Middle East not already under the thumb of friendly regimes.


Ms. Whitman was collateral damage in that struggle for trillions on dollars to be made, in the here and now...the short-term thinking of Republican Pirate Capitalists is to hell with their grandchildren, let them fight for breath in a poisoned world, I'm wealthy beyond all dreams of avarice.

[Raster]

13. The Cheney*/Bush* mis-administration was the Oil Oligarchy's "hail Mary" attempt to

permanently bend the United States and the world to their vision of the American future. Project for the new American century, anyone? The Oil Oligarchy--The Texas-American Petroleum Cartel, the Saudi Royal Family, BP and Royal Dutch Shell--have done everything in their powers to make sure the world is completely dependent upon their product, even though they have known for decades that our dependence on petroleum would eventually kill us and our planet. They did not care. And their continued arrogance and apathy is appalling. While the largest petroleum accident in history occurs just off our very shores, which will reek unimaginable environmental tragedy, the Oil Oligarch's keep their American main-stream media puppets on short leash, deliberately underplaying the severe environmental consequences. Prepare for coastal Florida to become the largest oil slick in history. Prepare for the Eastern Seaboard to be devastated. The cost of attempting to clean up this tragedy will large by borne by the American citizen. This will be yet another opportunity for well-connected corporate behemoths to profit off of tragedy. Don't be the least bit surprised if a subsidiary of Halliburton is granted secret, no-bid contracts to clean up this mess.

[Raster]

14. Kick! Far too important to sink early.

:kick:

[tilsammans]

16. Another K&R!

Excellent post and excellent replies.

:kick:

[annabanana]

23. k&r. . . n/t