07.24.08
Republicans block effort to subpoena global warming documents
James Gerstenzang in the LA Times:
Senate Republicans blocked a new effort to obtain Bush administration documents on global warming — and did so today by doing nothing.
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is already looking into whether higher-ups in the administration — and perhaps someone in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office — tried to squelch a finding that global warming would harm the nation’s welfare.
And the Bush administration has tried to turn aside the committee’s efforts to subpoena the EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, and another official as it tries to find out whether the Bush administration’s refusal to let California implement a tailpipe emissions law was based on politics rather than on science and law.
Today, the Senate Environment Committee sought to subpoena EPA papers that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the committee, said had concluded that “the welfare of the American people is endangered if steps are not taken to avoid the ravages of unchecked global warming.” She read them under an agreement that blocks wider distribution.
According to excerpts the committee released, the December, 2007, EPA document said that in the agency’s judgment, “the elevated, combined atmospheric concentrations of the six greenhouse gases are reasonably anticipated to endanger public welfare.”
Why did Johnson conclude that the nation’s welfare would be hurt? Because, the document states, the sea level will continue to rise, exacerbating “storm surge flooding and shoreline erosion; heat waves will be more intense and last longer, wildfires will worsen, and water resources will be strained.”
Bottom line: More greenhouse gases will make life worse in the United States.
Boxer’s effort to get broader access to the report, however, was turned aside. It takes two Republicans to join the majority Democrats to issue a subpoena.
None showed up.
Our colleague Richard Simon reports, however, that Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the committee, issued a press release calling Boxer’s efforts “a political exercise that is intended to score more political points to help keep this issue of alleged administration interference alive in the press as long as possible.”
