Court rebukes Bush Administration on global warming report
mongabay.com
August 22, 2007
Tuesday the Bush Administration was ordered to publish an updated research plan and national assessment on climate change. By law the White Hosue is required to publish such a report every four years, yet the current administration has failed to do so since it took office. The last National Assessment was issued in late 2000 under the Clinton administration, but environmental groups say the Bush Administration had tried to surpress its findings and recommendations.
"This administration has denied and suppressed the science of global warming at every turn," said Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the attorneys arguing the case. "Today's ruling is a stern rebuke of the administration's head-in-the-sand approach to global warming."
Citing the Global Change Research Act of 1990, Federal District Court Judge Saundra Armstrong ordered the Bush administration to issue the draft overdue Research Plan by March 1, 2008, with a final 90 days thereafter, and the National Assessment by May 31, 2008.
Bush Administration efforts to stall the report were brought to national attention in April 2005 when, at the request of Senators John Kerry and John McCain, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigated the Bush administration's failure to produce a 2004 National Assessment. The GAO concluded 1) the administration "did not submit a scientific assessment in November 2004, 4 years after the previous assessment, as required by the [Global Change Research] act," 2) the administration expressly refuses to complete a single National Assessment, and 3) the White House's piecemeal approach lacks an "explicit plan forâ¦assessing the effects of global change on the eight areas enumerated in the act: the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity."
"From muzzling NASA's top climate scientist to political cronies in the White House editing climate science reports, the Bush administration has repeatedly tried to obscure and deny the science, while attempting to run out the clock on his administration," said John Coequyt, energy policy analyst with Greenpeace.
This article is based on a news release from the Center for Biological Diversity.
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