EPA Chief Never Read Global Warming Report
Didn't Know Anything About It

TOM DOGGETT / Reuters 13jun02

Washington - Christine Todd Whitman, the top US environmental regulator, said yesterday she was not told in advance about a controversial Bush administration report that concluded greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities were the primary cause of global warming.

The report caused a stir last week among environmentalists because it appeared to align the administration with scientists who believe vehicle emissions and pollution from power plants and oil refineries have caused global temperatures to rise.

The United States is the world's biggest energy consumer and emissions producer.

President George W. Bush dismissed the report as a product of the federal "bureaucracy." Bush said he had read the report, but the White House later said the president was only briefed on the study.

The report was quietly posted on the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site after it was sent to the United Nations.

Whitman, the head of the EPA, said she did not read the report in advance and was not even aware of the study until news organizations reported it.

"I knew about it when I read it in the paper," she told reporters yesterday following a speech at an energy efficiency conference in Washington.

Green groups have long questioned whether Whitman has a say in setting administration environmental policies, or if those decisions are made by White House officials. Her comments on the climate change report raised more doubt.

'ABSENTEE LANDLORD AT EPA'

"It certainly creates the appearance that she's an absentee landlord at EPA," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust. "It's starting to look like she's (EPA) administrator in a ceremonial capacity."

Whitman said she was briefed on the EPA report after it was published.

The report's conclusions were reviewed by the staff of the EPA, the State Department and other agencies before it was published, Whitman said. "Since nobody saw anything earth-shattering in what the conclusions were ... they didn't think they needed to raise the red flag," she said.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said Wednesday he was out of the country when the report was released and he did not read it in advance, nor has he since been briefed on the study. Energy Department staff helped write the report.

Whitman, along with White House officials, have tried to downplay the controversy by citing a speech Bush gave last year when he stated that human activities were a cause of greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the administration's new report went a step further, saying human activities were primarily to blame for global warming and have caused "surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."

Environmentalists seized on the report as a major change in Bush administration policy. In the past, green groups pointed out that the administration had said the science was unclear on the causes of global warning.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES TO FIGURE IN ELECTIONS

With environmental issues likely to figure in November's congressional elections, a group of Senate Democrats last week demanded that the White House clarify if it stood behind the report or not.

Democrats have accused the administration of trying to relax various anti-pollution policies that are costly to industry. Republicans maintain that more voluntary and market-based programs can achieve the same results.

The Bush administration has been repeatedly criticized by the European Union for not doing more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions linked to global warming.

Green groups have urged the United States to re-sign the international Kyoto treaty that seeks to reduce the world greenhouse gas emissions by setting nation-by- nation targets.

The White House rejected the treaty as too expensive for US industry and instead put forward a program encouraging American firms to voluntarily curb heat- trapping emissions.

Whitman said the climate change report's conclusions would not alter administration policy. "We certainly aren't changing our position on Kyoto," she said.

Whitman said she would reiterate the administration's opposition to the treaty at a UN- sponsored conference on world poverty and environmental issues in Johannesburg, South Africa, later this summer.