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White House Makes Hefty Changes to E.P.A. Report
By Andrew C. Revkin and Katharine Q. Seelye
The New York Times
Thursday 19 June 2003
The
Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report
next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the
White House, a long section describing risks from rising global
temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.
The report,
commissioned in 2001 by the agency's administrator, Christie Whitman,
was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known
about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist
and how to fill them.
Agency
officials said it was tentatively scheduled to be released early next
week, before Mrs. Whitman steps down on June 27, ending a troubled time
in office that often put her at odds with President Bush.
Drafts of the
climate section, with changes sought by the White House, were given to
The New York Times yesterday by a former E.P.A. official, along with
earlier drafts and an internal memorandum in which some officials
protested the changes. Two agency officials, speaking on the condition
of anonymity, said the documents were authentic.
The editing
eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at
least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and
tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.
Among the
deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to
warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council
that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had
endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a
reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen
sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In
its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study,
partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that
conclusion.
In the end,
E.P.A. staff members, after discussions with administration officials,
said they decided to delete the entire discussion to avoid criticism
that they were selectively filtering science to suit policy.
Administration
officials defended the report and said there was nothing untoward about
the process that produced it. Mrs. Whitman said that she was "perfectly
comfortable" with the edited version and that the differences over
climate change should not hold up the broader assessment of the
nation's air, land and water.
"The first
draft, as with many first drafts, contained everything," she said in a
brief telephone interview from the CBS studios in Manhattan, where she
was waiting to tape "The Late Show With David Letterman."
"As it went
through the review, there was less consensus on the science and
conclusions on climate change," Ms. Whitman said. "So rather than go
out with something half-baked or not put out the whole report, we felt
it was important for us to get this out because there is a lot of
really good information that people can use to measure our successes."
James L.
Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, a White
House advisory group, said, "It would be utterly inaccurate to suggest
that this administration has not provided quite an extensive discussion
about the state of the climate. Ultimately, E.P.A. made the decision
not to include the section on climate change because we had these ample
discussions of the subject already."
But private environmental groups sharply criticized the changes when they heard of them.
"Political
staff are becoming increasingly bold in forcing agency officials to
endorse junk science," said Jeremy Symons, a climate policy expert at
the National Wildlife Federation. "This is like the White House
directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a
rosy economic picture."
Drafts of the
report have been circulating for months, but a heavy round of rewriting
and cutting by White House officials in late April raised protest among
E.P.A. officials working on the report.
An April 29
memorandum circulated among staff members said that after the changes
by White House officials, the section on climate "no longer accurately
represents scientific consensus on climate change."
Another
memorandum circulated at the same time said that the easiest course
would be to accept the White House revisions but that to do so would
taint the agency, because "E.P.A. will take responsibility and severe
criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly
representing the science."
The changes
were mainly made by the Council on Environmental Quality, although the
Office of Management and Budget was also involved, several E.P.A.
officials said. It is the second time in a year that the White House
has sought to play down global warming in official documents.
Last September,
an annual E.P.A. report on air pollution that for six years had
contained a section on climate was released without one, and the
decision to delete it was made by Bush administration appointees at the
agency with White House approval.
Like the
September report, the forthcoming report says the issues will be dealt
with later by a climate research plan being prepared by the Bush
administration.
Other sections
of the coming E.P.A. report — on water quality, ecological conditions,
ozone depletion in the atmosphere and other issues — all start with a
summary statement about the potential impact of changes on human health
and the environment, which are the two responsibilities of the agency.
But in the
"Global Issues" section of the draft returned by the White House to
E.P.A. in April, an introductory sentence reading, "Climate change has
global consequences for human health and the environment" was cut and
replaced with a paragraph that starts: "The complexity of the Earth
system and the interconnections among its components make it a
scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and
develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions
may affect the global environment in the future."
Some E.P.A.
staff members defended the document, saying that although pared down it
would still help policy makers and the agency address the climate issue.
"This is a
positive step by the agency," said an author of the report, who did not
want to be named, adding that it would help someone determine "if a
facility or pollutant is going to hurt my family or make it bad for the
birds, bees and fish out there."
(In
accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes.)
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