Our Changing Planet report (2002)
A White House official who once led the oil industry’s fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents. In handwritten notes on drafts of several reports issued in 2002 and 2003, the official, Philip A. Cooney, removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that government scientists and their supervisors, including some senior Bush administration officials, had already approved. In many cases, the changes appeared in the final reports.
The Climate Challenge
API and Clean Energy Technologies
The onset of interest in alcohol fuel in 1933 caught the oil industry off guard, but once alarmed, it reacted swiftly. The American Petroleum Institute urged formation of state level “emergency committees” in the spring of 1933 to oppose proposals for tax incentives. In a set of memos sent under a red cover marked “IMPORTANT,” API introduced a “coordinated program to be connected throughout the industry” to combat alcohol gasoline blending. The memo explained the threat: compulsory blend of alcohol and gasoline, as was used in France, Italy and Germany in the 1920s and early 30s, “will harm the petroleum industry and the automobile industry as well as state and national treasuries by reducing [oil] consumption
Response to the Senate’s Rejection of ANWR Provision
The Department of Interior on Wednesday approved oil and gas drilling on Alaska land considered such sensitive wildlife habitat that it was first protected by former Interior Secretary James G. Watt under President Reagan, and by four Interior secretaries since. The decision — decried by Native American, hunting and environmental groups — comes just weeks after the U.S. Senate rejected drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, about 200 miles to the east.
