Censor Censure

Bowdlerizing what was meant to be the first-ever comprehensive report on environmental problems facing the U.S., the White House has deleted most of the information the report contained on global climate change and reduced the remainder to a few vague paragraphs. The omitted sections referred to findings that climate change is at least partly caused by emissions from vehicles and power plants and could have dire consequences for human and environmental health. Environmental organizations and some EPA staff members strongly criticized the revisions; Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation compared them to "the White House directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a rosy economic picture." The report was commissioned in 2001 by U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman, who said she was "perfectly comfortable" with the edited version; it is scheduled to be released next week, before Whitman steps down on June 27.