Emissions probe fingers Cheney's office

A congressional investigation has found that US Vice President Dick Cheney’s office backed efforts by ExxonMobil and other oil industry players to scupper support among several top Bush Administration officials for using the US’s Clean Air Act to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The report released by Congress’s Select Committee on Energy Independent and Global Warming on Friday, found that several top officials in the White House backed an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finding that carbon emissions from cars, power plants and refineries endangered public health and should be regulated under the Act.

The White House officials backing the finding included Deputy Chief of Staff Joel Kaplan, Susan Dudley of the Office of Management and Budget and James Connaughton, chief of the Council on Environmental Quality, the report said.

The Congressional committee, headed by Massachusetts Democrat Congressman Edward Markey, is investigating the Bush administration’s response to the US Supreme Court finding last year that the EPA does have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clear Air Act.

In the report released last week, it accused the Bush Administration of “doing the bidding” of ExxonMobil and the oil industry.

It found that, following the Supreme Court decision, a plan was approved by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson which recognised the threat posed by greenhouse gas and proposed regulating vehicle and industrial emissions. The plan had the backing of several Cabinet members and government officers including the office of the US President George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff, the report said.

However, between December 2007 and early 2008, the Chief of Staff’s office changes its position and abandoned the proposals “in response to heavy lobbying from oil industry representatives and at least one senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, all of whom argued that regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would tarnish the President’s anti-regulatory legacy and therefore should be best left to the next President,” the report said.

The report found that the EPA plan was actively opposed by ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, with the support of Cheney adviser Chase Hutto. It found that the oil industry arguments began to prevail in discussion on how the administration should respond to the Supreme Court finding.

By April 2008 , the report said, Bush was able to announce in a speech that ““the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act were never meant to regulate global climate change”, and insist that tackling greenhouse gas emissions was the task of Congress.

The EPA announced earlier this month that it would not regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, refineries or industrial plants directly.

Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell denied the report’s finding that the vice president’s office had a role in backing the oil industry’s opposition to the EPA plan. “Frankly, that’s ridiculous,” she told the Los Angeles Times yesterday.

Meanwhile, Congressman Markey, who headed the investigation, said in a statement: “The fact that they can, with near unanimity, completely switch positions on global warming to please the oil industry is shocking, and yet disappointingly predictable.”