In the first months of the administration, O'Neill and EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman, the Republican former governor of New Jersey, both became engaged in carrying forward the President's campaign promise to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas that causes global warming. President Bush asked O'Neill in their first meeting to get him an action plan on global warming. This February memo from Treasury official John Hambor shows the department acting on the assumption that the administration would remain engaged, in some fashion, in Kyoto.