22 Former Bush Administration Officials Now Lobbying On Climate Policy

Twenty-two former Bush administration officials once responsible for climate policy are now lobbying on the climate change issue, mostly for the oil, gas and mining industries, according to a new report by watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

"These alumni of the Bush climate team continue to shape and confuse the debate over global warming," said CREW executive director Melanie Sloan in a statement. "They may have changed their uniforms, but they're still playing for the same team."

Of 120 staff officials at the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Environmental Protection Agency, CREW turned up 22 people who have moved on to the influence industry. Of those, 14 are registered lobbyists.

The poster child for this particular revolving door is probably Philip Cooney, who resigned from his position at CEQ in 2005 after it emerged that he'd edited climate reports to play down evidence of global warming. Cooney worked for the American Petroleum Institute before joining the Bush administration, and after he resigned he took a job with API member Exxon-Mobil.

CREW's report suggests that the weakening climate change consensus among the U.S. public is due to the influence of disinformation spread by former officials like Cooney: "Through lobbying and industry-manufactured 'grassroots' activities, these individuals continue to influence and confuse the debate over global warming and hamper the efforts of the current administration to help establish a public consensus on this issue."

Click here for a PDF of CREW's report.

Comments

[tuberider]

02:15 PM on 12/09/2009

They'd sell their mothers. Why wouldn't they sell poison to the unwashed masses?

[1010TRAVIS]

11:16 AM on 12/09/2009

I'm was going with the scientist from CRU and Penn state, oh and the IPCC, until the started dropping like flies.....why is that? Shouldn't that make us rethink some?

[invest in jobs]

11:01 AM on 12/09/2009

it;s unfortunate Obama is taking advice from neoconservative, globalist economists like Bernanke, Geithner & Summers instead of being more receptive to Krugman & Volcker.

hat tip to: http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

[realpolitic]

05:04 AM on 12/09/2009

I liked when Congress asked Cooney if he was a spinmaster. He seemed hurt and said he was just trying to enforce the Bush environmental policies or lack of them. He was completely clueless that his entire role was to just waterdown the science of climate change. Such conservatives as he always want to see themselves as good people even as they do so much to harm the country and serve monied interests instead of the truth.

[Mosby12]

05:28 PM on 12/08/2009

Hmmm ... 22 thats quite a number but it pales in comparison to the hundreds of Clinton appointees lobbying on the other side!!!!

[Decipherer]

05:53 PM on 12/08/2009

Thanks for making us fully aware that you have no idea what you are talking about. Duly noted.

[ArtsyJane]

10:39 PM on 12/08/2009

Clinton who?

[dfranz]

03:48 PM on 12/08/2009

This only makes sense considering that the entire Bush Administration were in the back pockets of oil producers, refiners and developers. Cheney couldn't make a recommendation without consulting Haliburton

[ArtsyJane]

10:40 PM on 12/08/2009

It is their bosses after all.

[invest in jobs]

03:37 PM on 12/08/2009

This is further proof that the US government is ineffectual at everything except enabling the plundering of everything we, the American people, work for by the corporate elite.
good articles; http://financeopinionss.blgospot.com

Government & multi-national corporations like peas in a pod

[vippy]

03:24 PM on 12/08/2009

Ethanol is producing SMOG yet the government wants to increase it from 10% to 15%. How many ethanol plants have gone Chapter 13 since last year? How many new cars have stalled on the highway because of the ethanol in gasoline with 10% and now congress is pushing for more because of ADM. Are they talking out of both sides of their mouth with this climate change thingy?

[Decipherer]

06:17 PM on 12/08/2009

I wonder why the HP scrubbing bubbles trashed my comments about what is quite possibly the most ig.no.ra.nt post I've seen around here in a long time?

[joebaggadonuts]

12:54 PM on 12/08/2009

So since they cannot read, they probably missed the restrictions.
http://www.opm.gov/transition/trans20r-ch2.htm

Maybe Holder can focus some DoJ attention on violations of law here and we can watch the rats scurry away.

[zest]

12:30 PM on 12/08/2009

There is no change except who is paying them now.

[Reiner-von-Sinn]

11:39 AM on 12/08/2009

I thought they already had been

[invest in jobs]

11:33 AM on 12/08/2009

It's fishy how everything now is suddenly 'better than expected' ...and to think just 9 months ago the world was going end. tax payers were duped into bailing out big banks under this premise. economy & stock market is a big joke
good articles; http://financeopinionss.blogspot.com

[protagonia]

10:31 AM on 12/08/2009

They should be in a cage, forever.

[Avanti2]

09:54 AM on 12/08/2009

These folks in Denmark are such a bunch of hypocrites. Limos, Private Planes and all that CO2 spewing hot air. Looks like a two week orgy to me with free Se x provided the local's if you show you conference badge. Oh, and $1,200 for a picture with Gore and a Gore Signed Book before he takes off for home in his Private Jet! Gosh, I hate these folks that fudge there own data in order to push there own agenda. What a Con Job!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6736517/Copenhagen-climate-summit-1200-limos-140-private-planes-and-caviar-wedges.html

[Decipherer]

06:22 PM on 12/08/2009

You wouldn't know a "con job" if we spotted you the "C," or the "O" or the "N."

[phoenixdoglover]

09:48 AM on 12/08/2009

What better evidence do we need that a major focus of the Bush administration was to actually wreck the functioning of government?

[blizb]

09:56 AM on 12/08/2009

For the former Bush administration to turn about now seems somewhat unusual, but since Bush didn't allow much dissent they were probably afraid of losing their jobs if they didn't support the "Bush Doctrine".

[MikeDu]

12:50 PM on 12/09/2009

Could the argument be reversed? That Bush admin policies were driven largely with an eye towards acquiring that big money industry job after they got out? Can't exactly say "Catastrophic climate change is coming" because that would reduce the number of zeroes tacked onto the end of your Big Oil lobbying paycheck.