Philip Cooney

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Philip A. Cooney (born July 16, 1959), a former member of the administration of President George W. Bush. Before serving in the federal government, he was a lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute.

Contents

[edit] Personal

Cooney holds a bachelor's degree in economics. He and his wife and children have lived in Alexandria, Virginia and Southlake, Texas.

[edit] Career

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[edit] American Petroleum Institute

Prior to working for the Bush Administration, Cooney was a lawyer and lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry group representing the American petroleum industry[citation needed].

[edit] Bush administration

Cooney joined the George W. Bush administration when he was appointed chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality. Cooney, who received criticism for having a nonscientific background as leader of an environmental policy body[citation needed], resigned in 2005, shortly after it was reported that he had altered government climate reports to downplay scientific consensus about climate change.[1]

[edit] Post-White House

On June 10, 2005, Cooney announced his resignation, two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke.[2] A few days later, it was announced that Cooney would go to work for the oil company ExxonMobil starting in the fall; ExxonMobil declined to describe the nature of Cooney's new job.[3]

[edit] Controversies

[edit] Government climate reports

In early 2005, Rick S. Piltz resigned from his position as a senior associate in the U.S. Climate Change Science Program and revealed that Cooney had been editing government climate reports to emphasize doubts about global warming. According to Piltz's resignation letter, Cooney edited documents to "create an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about climate change and its implications." [4] In June of that year, after this scandal, Cooney resigned from his position in the Bush Administration as was previously planned as he had already accepted a job at ExxonMobil, gaining this company the antipathy of some people.

On June 3 2002, Myron Ebell wrote a memo[5] to Cooney that was obtained by Greenpeace through an FOI request in 2003[6], explaining how they were going to deal with the publication of the Climate Action Report 2002 by attacking EPA chair 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."

On August 11, 2003, Maine Attorney General Steven Rowe and Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal in a press release[7][8] called on United States Attorney General John Ashcroft

“ to investigate whether officials at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) solicited a conservative Washington think tank to sue the federal government in order to invalidate a government document warning of the impacts of global warming.

The two state attorneys general obtained an email document through a Freedom of Information Act request that revealed a great intimacy between CEQ and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) on strategizing about ways to undermine the United States' official reports and the authority of its officials.

[...] It appears that certain White House officials conspired with an anti-environmental special interest group to cause the lawsuit to be filed against the federal government.

 ”

On 24 September 2003, Senator Joseph Lieberman sent a formal letter to the White House asking for details of these ties, 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 the administration under the little-used Data Quality Act 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. Lieberman charged that the suit was apparently an attempt to have the National Assessment (and therefore the Climate Action Report) withdrawn.[9]

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." [10] ”

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.

Philip Cooney and his role in editing climate change reports were referenced in the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore).

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 United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.[11][12]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Andrew Revkin (8 June 2005). Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming. Retrieved on 2008-04-23.
  2. ^ Andrew Revkin (10 June 2005). Editor of Climate Report Resigns. Retrieved on 2008-04-23.
  3. ^ Andrew Revkin (15 June 2005). Ex-Bush Aide Who Edited Climate Reports to Join ExxonMobil. Retrieved on 2008-04-23.
  4. ^ Rick S. Piltz (1 June 2005). On Issues of Concern about the Governance of the Climate Change Science Program pp. 10-11. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
  5. ^ Myron Ebell (3 June 2002). Phil, thanks for calling and. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
  6. ^ Greenpeace (9 September 2003). Greenpeace Obtains Smoking-gun Memo: White House/Exxon Link. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
  7. ^ "MAINE, CONNECTICUT AGs CALL ON ASHCROFT TO INVESTIGATE WHITE HOUSE ROLE IN LAWSUIT". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
  8. ^ (11 August 2003). "Bush White House Charged With Conspiracy With Private Think". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
  9. ^ 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.
  10. ^ Andrew Revkin. "Bush Aide Softened Greenhouse Gas Links to Global Warming", New York Times, 8 June 2005. 
  11. ^ Robert Lusetich. "Climate science was doctored", The Australian, March 21, 2007. 
  12. ^ House Probe Turns to Role of Cheney's Office (20 March 2007). Retrieved on 2007-06-08.

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