A01459
Articles : EnvironmentSpin of the Week
In a lengthy memo Rick S. Piltz, a former senior associate in the Climate Change Science Program, revealed that U.S. government climate research reports had been edited by a White House official, Philip A. Cooney, to emphasize doubts about climate change. According to Piltz’s memo Cooney, a former “climate team leader” and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute, changed one 2002 document to “create an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about climate change and its implications.” In March this year Piltz resigned and subsequently contacted the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization. A White House spokeswoman, Michele St. Martin, told The New York Times that Cooney would not be available to speak to reporters. “He’s not a cleared spokesman,” she said. Myron Ebell from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a corporate-funded think tank, defended the editing as necessary for “consistency.”
Source: The New York Times, June 8, 2005
GNN’s Spin of the Week come courtesy of our friends at PR Watch, a project of the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He has worked as a producer for MTV and Fuse. He is the co-author of GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,...
...reports had been edited by a White House official, American Petroleum Institute, changed one 2002 document to “create an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about climate change and its implications.”
So there’s a White House official named “American Petroleum Institute”? Poor guy…
“A white House spokeswoman”
“told _The New York Times”
A, maybe your articles need to be presented in the yard as well, just like ours. After all, mistakes like this bring down the credibility of GNN...
BP shows two faces as it fights US bill to cut CO2 emissions
By Katherine Griffiths in New York
12 June 2005
BP’s reputation as one of the world’s most environmentally progressive energy companies is on the line. The oil giant has been privately lobbying in Washington to block legislation to introduce a mandatory curb on greenhouse gases in the US, it has emerged.
The move has prompted an outcry from America’s green lobby. Environmentalists had hoped the country’s new energy bill would include a stringent set of regulations on climate change in the US, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, after it refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
BP’s attempt to scupper the inclusion of mandatory caps in the energy bill has emerged just two days after its representatives met Tony Blair last week to back an initiative to reduce harmful emissions.
The British oil group’s position in the crucial American market is also at odds with a bold decision by its chief executive, Lord Browne, in 2002 to acknowledge the crisis facing the environment in a speech at Stanford University in California. Since then, BP has adopted the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” and turned its logo into a green sunflower to underline its environmental credentials.
Yet in a meeting two weeks ago with New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman, one of the leading senators on the energy natural resources committee, executives from BP’s Washington office said the company would not support Senator Bingaman’s proposal in the energy bill for compulsory limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
The company is unlikely to back a separate proposal by John McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, and Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases. Instead, BP said it supported a third alternative from Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, which requires companies only to try to cut emissions with the promise of tax breaks. Debate will start on all three sets of proposals this week when the energy bill comes before the senate.
Peter Goldmark, the director of the climate and air programme at pressure group Environmental Defense in New York said: “We were stunned when we found out BP was supporting Hagel. It is completely at odds with its record and its public statements.”
Washington’s Clean Air Watch said BP was guilty of “greenwashing on epic proportions” by championing green causes in public while privately backing the weakest of the amendments to the energy bill.
A spokeswoman for BP defended the company’s position, saying the Hagel framework was “an achievable step in creating good climate policy”.
The company believes that some of the McCain-Lieberman and Bingaman proposals would not achieve the ultimate goal of reducing global warming.
A former oil industry lobbyist has resigned as a White House aide after being accused of doctoring official US policy papers on global warming to play down the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
Philip Cooney, who was chief of staff of the White House council on environmental quality, quit his job two days after a report released by a watchdog group, the government accountability project, showed he had deleted some paragraphs and edited others drafted by government scientists.
Article continues
BM says:
A, maybe your articles need to be presented in the yard as well, just like ours. After all, mistakes like this bring down the credibility of GNN
They are submitted to the yard, its just that the ‘Comandantes’ get a weighting of 40 points. Anthony should try to do as good a job as he does checking other peoples articles on his own, though.
PC says
They are submitted to the yard, its just that the ‘Comandantes’ get a weighting of 40 points. Anthony should try to do as good a job as he does checking other peoples articles on his own, though.
i don’t call that ‘sumbitting it to’ or ‘presenting it in’ the yard. I call that rushing it through without anyone noticing (=peer review)
Anyway, I’m very interested to see where this story is going and what the concequences will be.
PR watch’s article doesn’t have him named that here is the missing phrase
“Philip A. Cooney, to emphasize doubts about climate change. According to Piltz’s memo Cooney, a former “climate team leader” and lobbyist with the American Petroleum Institute”it still has House capatalized but is missing the _
A, I suggest a no voting on own material policy(like it is in the blogs) so that others have a chance to notice this stuff.
Of course an oil lobbyist si the new sciantist for global warming. They get away with everything else, why not this too?
In Anthony’s defense, he’s working this site and working other jobs as well. Pulled in ten directions. Despite my own issues with articles section editorial policy, Anthony has a huge schedule and he’s human.
(So there’s a White House official named “American Petroleum Institute”? Poor guy…)
Yea, but everybody just calls him “AP, my boy…”
HJ says
In Anthony’s defense, he’s working this site and working other jobs as well. Pulled in ten directions. Despite my own issues with articles section editorial policy, Anthony has a huge schedule and he’s human.
that’s why he has to post it in the yard. we’re there to help. wasn’t it A who said he wanted to move this site into our hands asap?
Sorry about that. The PR Watch stuff is ususally tightly edited. The problem with putting things through the Yard is time. I don’t have enough time, nor do I have enough material, to put it up in the Yard and wait for edits. For instance, Gavin posts her GNR in the Yard, but no one seems to bother checking it for typos, etc, which I end up doing, and editing myself. I appreciate the concern.
In the future, please send me a private message so I can be aware of problems like this. Thanks.
“... defended the editing as necessary for “consistency.” “
That’s hilarious
Truth or not, as long as it all points in the same direction
Heh
ExxonMobil has confirmed that it has hired Philip A. Cooney, the former chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality who resigned last week after it was revealed that his editing of government scientists reports downplayed the significance of climate change. An Exxon Mobil spokesman declined to provide details of Cooney’s new job, which he starts in autumn. Deputy spokeswoman for the White House, Dana Perino, told the New York Times “Phil Cooney did a great job and we appreciate his public service and the work that he did, and we wish him well in the private sector.”
Source