Controversy
During the George W. Bush Administration, there were concerns over links between CEQ staff members and industry. The organization was described as "a hard-line group of advisers with close links to the U.S. oil industry."
President Bush's CEQ chairman James L. Connaughton was formerly a partner at law firm Sidley Austin LLP, where he lobbied to reduce government regulation on behalf of clients including the Aluminum Company of America and the Chemical Manufacturers Association of America.
One CEQ chief of staff under President Bush, Philip Cooney, was previously a lobbyist employed by the American Petroleum Institute. In June 2005, the New York Times published a memo internal to the CEQ provided by federal whistleblower Rick Piltz. The memo showed Cooney had repeatedly edited government climate reports in order to play down links between emissions and global warming. Cooney, who says he had been planning to resign for two years, resigned two days after the scandal broke "to spend more time with his family." Immediately after resigning, Cooney went to work for ExxonMobil in their public affairs department. In 2005 Piltz created a watchdog organization, Climate Science Watch, a program of the Government Accountability Project.
Read more about this topic: Council On Environmental Quality
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
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“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
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