Philip Cooney
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Philip Cooney is the former chief of staff for President George W. Bush's Council on Environmental Quality and a former energy industry lobbyist.
On March 2002, Myron Ebell wrote a memo to him that was later obtained by Greenpeace, explaining how they were going to deal with the publication of the Climate Action Report 2002 by attacking Christine Todd Whitman, adding that he was helping to "drive a wedge between the President and those in the Administration who think they are serving the president's best interests by publishing this rubbish."[1]
On 24 September 2003, Senator Joseph Lieberman sent formal letter to the White House asking for details of this exchange, and the nature of the help Cooney had received. He also wanted to know about the lawsuit the CEI had filed on 6 August 2003 against Administration to invalidate the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, which formed the basis for many of the conclusions in the Climate Action Report, claiming that it was apparently an attempt to have the National Assessment (and therefore the Climate Action Report) withdrawn.[2]
On 8 June 2005, The New York Times reported that it had obtained internal White House documents which proved that Cooney had unilaterally edited the national climate change reports during 2002 and 2003 to water down its conclusions.New York Times report on Cooney's resignation While never denying Cooney's editing of the documents, the White House claimed that such changes were part of the normal adjustments in language to government documents and that the documents were passed through multiple agencies while editing the document.
Two days after the article was published, Cooney resigned his position as chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and got a job at ExxonMobil. However, his resignation was planned months before the memo was leaked and he had already accepted the position at ExxonMobil.
Prior to working for the Bush Administration, Cooney was a lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobbying organization which has, since 1997, opposed emissions limits by claiming that there was too much uncertainty in climate science.
Philip Cooney and his role in editing climate change reports were referenced in the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
[edit] External links
- New York Times report on Cooney's resignation
- BBC News report on Cooney's resignation
- Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, press release September 24, 2003 Regarding an investigation into Cooney's attempts to "clean up the mess" after a report was issued which linked man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to global warming.
