References to a cap on carbon emissions and a campaign pledge to
spend $150 billion on clean energy technologies disappeared from
the White House website in June — even as the Senate was still
trying to pass legislation implementing those priorities.
Peter Bray, president of
Versionista, a Portland, Ore.-based company that tracks
changes to the White House site, said the Obama administration
made “whole-cloth” changes to its Energy & Environment issues
site on June 10.
Deleted items include a section titled “Closing the
Carbon Loophole and Cracking Down on Polluters” that offered
broad-brush goals for “protecting American consumers” and “promoting
U.S. competitiveness.”
Also eliminated was President Barack Obama’s oft-repeated
campaign call to spend $150 billion over a decade on “energy
research and development to transition to a clean energy economy.”
In its place, the new White House site includes a three-minute
Earth Day-themed video from Obama and a list of several of his early
accomplishments, including $80 billion for renewable energy via the
economic stimulus package and new federal climate rules for motor
vehicles. It also says Obama is “working with Congress to pass
comprehensive energy and climate legislation.”
The website changes came with little fanfare at the same time
that environmental groups were pleading with Obama to take a more
proactive role to find the votes for a sweeping climate bill. The
president’s prime-time address from the Oval Office on June 15 drew
criticism from activists when he didn’t mention the words “carbon,”
“greenhouse gases,” “global warming” or “cap and trade.”
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) decided after an additional
month of internal debate to drop the carbon cap and instead try for
a legislative response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Plans to
move that bill remain uncertain headed into the midterm elections.
Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the
Breakthrough Institute, said he first noticed the changes to the
White House website on Wednesday and immediately posted a
blog entry questioning the administration’s motives.
“One could read the changes at WhiteHouse.gov as a simple
reflection of where Obama now is in his presidency, with almost two
years under his belt and a list of accomplishments to his name to
replace a set of campaign-style promises,” Jenkins wrote. “Equally
notable, however, is the list of what has indeed been accomplished,
and what, for now, remains an entirely unfulfilled promise.”
A White House aide insisted Thursday that Obama steadily pushed
for a climate bill through the summer and dismissed suggestions the
web site changes came with any ulterior motive.
“The website changes were the work of a few staff-level people
updating information that had fallen badly out of date – prior to
the update, for instance, we had a website that failed to mention
that the vehicles rule had gone final,” the Obama staffer said. “The
idea that we were clever enough to tinker with the website as the
contours of legislative debate changed is absurd.”
