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Philip A. Cooney, we salute you for your government service!
By “we”, I don’t mean me, and probably not you, since Cooney is a very oily guy. He was George W’s chief of staff for the White House council on environmental quality, and no one but an oil executive would salute his four years of “service” there – service to the industry.
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He resigned in 2005 after media reports that his office was “editing” government climate reports to play down the threats of global warming. Now, a house committee has released documents confirming that Cooney had taken his little red pencil to hundreds of reports, editing them to fit the industry’s self-serving denials about the existence of this environmental catastrophe.
Did I mention that this supposed watchdog over environmental quality has no scientific background? None whatsoever. What was his qualification to serve in such a key position? He had been the “climate team leader” at the oil industry’s main lobbying group in Washington.
Cooney now says that his work for the oil industry had no bearing on his subsequent job at the White House, declaring, “My sole loyalties were to the President.” No doubt, but – hello! – the President’s sole loyalties on global warming policy are to Big Oil. So Bush, oil, and you are three sides of the same triangle of deceit.
The one White House official to rush to Cooney’s defense was James Connaughton, chairman of the environmental council. But Connaughton is as oily as Cooney, having previously been a lobbyist for ARCO and other industrial polluters – and now serving as a major player in the Bush administration’s efforts to ignore, divert, stall, dismiss, and otherwise block all calls for action against the industrial causes of global warming.
This is Jim Hightower saying… Guess where Cooney landed when he left the White House? He was hired by Exxon Mobil, thus bringing his saga full circle.
“Material Shows Weakening Of Climate Change Reports”, New York Times, March 20, 2007
“Report Charges White House Efforts to Stifle Climate Research”, The Blotter, March 27, 2007
“A Dirty Dozen”, Stop Beating Around the Bush, pp. 14-15