I'll never understand conservatives protecting corporation's/industry's right to pollute. It is deadly for all of our loved ones.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4075986.stm

A White House official edited government reports in ways that played down links between global warming and emissions, the New York Times reported.
Philip Cooney removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists, the newspaper said.

The White House denied Mr Cooney, a former oil industry advocate, watered down the reports.

It said the changes were part of a normal inter-agency review process.

The reports were "based on the best available science", spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Mr Cooney is chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which helps devise and promote the administration's policies on environmental issues.

The administration of President George W Bush has consistently questioned the need for quick action on climate change, and the US has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol aimed at cutting down greenhouse gas emissions.

'Uncertainties'

Before working at the White House, Mr Cooney was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil industry trade group.

He is a lawyer by training, with no scientific background.

The New York Times said he made dozens of changes to reports issued in 2002 and 2003, and many appeared in final versions of major administration climate reports.

They included the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties", and tended to produce an air of doubt about findings most climate experts say are robust, the paper reported.

In another instance, the paper said Mr Cooney added the word "extremely" to the sentence, "The attribution of the causes of biological and ecological changes to climate change or variability is extremely difficult."

The newspaper obtained the documents from the Government Accountability Project, a non-profit group that provides legal assistance to whistle-blowers.

The project is representing Rick Piltz, who resigned in March from the office that co-ordinates government climate research and which issued the documents that Mr Cooney edited.

I will never understand how so many corporations can be completely devoid of community values, and ignore the long term benefits of conservation for simple short term profit.

hear hear. You should take that a step further and ask why people allow our politicians to get away with it? And it is clearly a conservative ideal to let it happen or turn a blind eye for the sake of profit.

I agree, we allow our politicians to get away with far to much. The Government waste I see regularly is disgusting and profane.

Why can't these people see how they harming the world?

Blinded by the money they make

Not just the money...

"What good is money if it can't inspire terror in your fellow man? "
-Montgomery Burns

Ah, Monty.

How bout the new way they're doing it, every company gets the "right" to produce so many tons worth of pollutants, but if another company isn't going to use all their allotted tons, you can buy their credit. In effect, the same amount of polluting is going on, but now money is changing hands, and that is supposed to make it better somehow.

Yeah, pollution has becom an industrial currency of sorts. I was listening to how the whole process works on the radio (NPR) the other day and it blew my mind. It's really a shame that our government comes up with such elaborate ways to dupe the general public and assist corporate greed.