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. In a position that may be viewed as requiring scientific training, Cooney is a lawyer and holds a bachelors degree in economics.

In June, 2005, Cooney resigned his position in the Bush Administration and was hired by ExxonMobil.[1]

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."[2]

On 24 September 2003, Senator Joseph Lieberman sent a 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 Competitive Enterprise Institute (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claiming that it was apparently an attempt to have the National Assessment (and therefore the Climate Action Report) withdrawn.[3]

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. As the article reports,

“ In a section on the need for research into how warming might change water availability and flooding, he crossed out a paragraph describing the projected reduction of mountain glaciers and snowpack. His note in the margins explained that this was "straying from research strategy into speculative findings/musings. [4] ”

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.

During a March 2007 congressional hearing, Cooney conceded his role in altering reports to downplay the adverse effects of man-made emissions on the planet's climate. "My sole loyalty was to the President and advancing the policies of his administration," he told the house government reform committee.[5]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Andrew Revkin. "Former Bush Aide Who Edited Reports Is Hired by Exxon", New York Times, 15 June 2005.
  2. ^ Greenpeace. "Greenpeace Obtains Smoking-gun Memo: White House/Exxon Link", 9 September 2003.
  3. ^ Joseph Lieberman (24 September 2003). Lieberman seeks White House contacts regarding global warming lawsuit CEQ, think tank discussed how to "clean up this mess". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-02-23.
  4. ^ Andrew Revkin. "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming", New York Times, 8 June 2005.
  5. ^ Robert Lusetich. "Climate science was doctored", The Australian, March 21, 2007.

[edit] External links

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