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Remember Alan Carlin? He was an EPA economist whose critical comments on a then proposed EPA finding that greenhouse gases endangered health and the environment were suppressed by the powers that be in the EPA.
When the story came out, he became the instant darling of conservative commentators and global warming skeptics. They claimed that his writings were suppressed because they did not reflect the party line in the new Obama administration. The horror.
Well, now it turns out that a report was prepared under the Bush administration that concluded exactly the same thing as the recent EPA finding, namely that greenhouse gas emissions were endangering public welfare and needed to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. The document also discussed how global warming's effects on air quality, agriculture, forestry, water resources and coastal areas endanger public welfare.
And guess what? That report was suppressed by officials in the Office of Management and Budget. The e-mail containing the report was never even opened. Instead, it was marked "Deliberative, Do Not Distribute" and buried, never to see the light of day until last summer, when three senators were allowed to see excerpts. Obviously, the White House knew political dynamite when it saw it.
I wonder what the conservative commentators and skeptics who were so quick to complain about suppression of honest scientific opinion when it involved Alan Carlin will have to say about this.
The eight years of missed opportunities to deal with climate change during the Bush administration can never be gotten back. But now we know that two administrations that differed on just about everything imaginable were in agreement on the central points about the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions.
That should send a pretty powerful message to Congress. And maybe this time the message will be opened and acted upon.
This essay first appeared in PlanetRestart.org.
