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Censoring the truth on climate change |
My third-grade teacher used to tell us: "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say it." Recent events have convinced me that she also taught most of the people who now work in the White House (though not the former speech writer of 'Axis-of-Evil' fame).
It seems that if you don't have something nice to say about climate change, you are better off keeping your mouth firmly shut. Case in point: members of the Bush administration recently edited out statements concerning the negative impact of global warming on public health from a Senate testimony prepared by Julie Gerberding, who heads the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The White House shortened the original 12-page draft (pdf) of Gerberding's testimony down to six pages, removing passages such as the one describing how northern regions of the country "will likely bear the brunt of increases in ground-level ozone and associated airborne pollutants. Populations in Midwestern and Northeastern cities are expected to experience more heat-related illnesses as heat waves increase in frequency, severity, and duration".
Maybe politicians living closer to the equator in Washington, DC simply find this northern stuff irrelevant. Maybe they had so much fun censoring experts in the past that they decided they'd do it again.
In the Senate hearing last week, Gerberding did say that climate change "is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans." But, as a result of the edits made to her testimony, she did not tell lawmakers that "the public health effects of climate change remain largely unaddressed."
Gerberding for her part does not seem too disturbed by the edits to the text. Maybe she should be. Her willingness to acquiesce to the White House's abbreviated truth only makes it easier for the administration to get away with these types of dangerous revisions.
Bush officials said they made the changes to her statement to better align it with a report published by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Given the administration's reluctance to tackle global warming head-on, I suspect ulterior motives. I may not always be able to follow my third-grade teacher's advice on keeping quiet about unpleasant facts, but I did learn from her how to put two and two together.
Roxanne Khamsi, online reporter
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