Democrats Demand Release of EPA Climate Change Documents

Former US Environmental Protection Agency deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett announced that Vice President Dick Cheney's office censored six pages of congressional testimony to cover up global warming-related threats to public health. In a letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Burnett explained how the Council of Environment Quality and the Office of the Vice President sought to delete the parts of the testimony of Julie L. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who had planned to say that the CDC considered global warming a public health threat.

Boxer said that the administration feared that Gerberding's testimony would lead to Clean Air Act regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. President Bush has consistently opposed the setting of mandatory emission limits. EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson has refused to explain his agency's decision not to regulate greenhouse gases based on the CDC's findings.

GET INFORMED

• Read "Cheney's Staff Cut Testimony On Warming" (Washington Post, July 9, 2008)
• Read "EPA chief won't explain climate choices" (Associated Press, July 24, 2008)
  

GET INVOLVED

• Sign Senator Barbara Boxer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee petition urging EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson to turn over all communications related to the EPA's findings about global warming's consequences on public health and the environment

photo courtesy Miguel A. Lopes "Migufu", Creative Commons