The 2004 Republican Party platform revealed absolutely no concern for the environment, while stressing the protection of private property and the current economy. After five years, it's time to revisit the environment to see how it has fared under the current administration. If the Bush Administration's encounter with the environment could be summed up with a sports analogy, it would read Bush 24, environment zero.
Using presidential authority, Bush has weakened environmental protections by applying many tactics such as appointing industry lobbyists to head agencies, changing or ignoring rules and enforcement, and passing new laws to negate protections, such as the Healthy Forest Act, the Clean Skies bill and a massive new energy bill.
Industry and the Republican Party employed a number of schemes to help destroy laws protecting the environment. A third of Bush's appointments to federal courts worked as lobbyists for polluting industries, such as oil, gas, timber and mining, and by May 2004, Bush had appointed over 100 former lobbyists and company lawyers to head agencies that regulate industry and the environment. In case after case, former lobbyists redefined policies to shift the regulations to favor their former clients, most often polluting industries.
Bush undid
There are dozens of additional examples. Under Bush, civil penalties imposed by the EPA against polluters set a record 15-year low, and cases against refineries and coal-fired power plants declined 90 percent. In August 2003, Bush's EPA allowed thousands of power plants, oil refineries, and industrial plants to upgrade their operations without reducing pollution. In April 2006, Bush suspended environmental rules for gasoline manufacturing and his administration continues to push for drilling off shore in the protected Alaskan wilderness and other environmentally fragile areas.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted oil and gas drilling on public lands from following the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts and other environmental laws, and allowed the BLM to issue a record 7,000 drilling permits on public lands. Bush oversaw the largest timber sale in modern history - 372 million board feet or 30 square miles - in southwest
Besides the backdoor approach to non-enforcement of laws, far-right Congressmen consider environmental protection bad for profits and seek to repeal or seriously weaken the Wilderness Preservation Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act as well as regulations that restrict private property and commercial development.
Overall, environmental records under the Bush Administration, a Republican Congress and Republican-appointed federal judges have fallen like bowling pins in a master's tournament. Scientists assume that no single weather effect can be blamed on a single cause because the earth's weather system is so complex, yet rising greenhouse gases and record temperatures are more than coincidental. Although some environmental records cannot be directly attributed to the current powers in
In February 2006, Karl Rove bragged that President Bush has transformed conservatism from "reactionary" to "forward looking" by incorporating liberal ideas into foreign policy. Rove claims Bush is "spreading human liberty and preserving human dignity" with his current environmental policies. The GOP highlights Bush's environmental efforts such as increasing mileage requirements for SUVs by .03 miles per gallon, and cutting taxes so people can buy new cars. Rove didn't say whether this is part of Bush's "compassionate conservative" stance, but environmental records reveal Bush's effectiveness.
In March 2006, the largest oil spill in
Many of the records set during Republican control involve global warming. In April 2006, studies revealed that the
Another possible effect of global warming occurred this spring in
European flooding is also setting records. In April 2006, the
In 2005, a dramatic rise of 7 C in the ocean temperature led to the deaths of birds and fish from
The decline of fisheries worldwide also puts pressure on other species, such as the great white shark, whose population declined 70 percent in the past 15 years. In
Coral death also set a record in May 2006 when the first coral reefs were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
Under an administration that denies global warming is caused by carbon dioxide, the weather continues to break records. In May, the
Along with drought come forest fires, which are also setting records. In March 2006, 1.8 million acres burned in
In the
Climate researchers at Perdue and MIT find evidence that global warming causes increased hurricane activity, doubling intensity and frequency of storms with each one-quarter-degree increase in average global temperature. In keeping with these findings, last year's hurricane season broke many records. Katrina was the deadliest hurricane in the
The current administration refuses to take any steps to combat global warming but at least they report it. NASA reported that 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded, hotter than any time in the past 650,000 years, according to analysis of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice. The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was 60 million years ago, during the Paleocene epoch, when a massive die-off occurred. The past ten years were the warmest ever recorded, apart from 1996, which was slightly cooler than 1990. The 2005 average global temperature was 58.3 F (14.6 C), the hottest since record keeping began in the late 1800s. Heat waves across
Over the past 50 years, temperatures rose more in the high-latitudes of
In June 2001, the National Academy of Sciences reported, "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise." Bush responded to the report, "We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it," and devoted $25 million to research the subject. Since then, the White House proposed plans to reduce enforcement of pollution rules for US industry and energy companies in favor of a voluntarily curb on carbon dioxide emissions.
In April 2006, reports surfaced that the Bush Administration was making it difficult for climate research scientists to speak truthfully about global warming. Examples included a 2002 report of the Interior Department censuring a news release because it would cause "great problems in the department." In November 2005, Bush censors "purged key words from the (press) releases, including 'global warming,' 'warming climate,' and 'climate change.'" Officials also attempted to alter what scientists told the media and bar researchers from talking to the media about policy matters.
Government attacks on the environment, assisted by corporate-sponsored attacks, attempt to show global warming as a liberal hoax. In May 2006, Bush's business allies aired commercials in 13 cities attacking Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which reveals how pollution and greenhouse gases are affecting the environment. The attack ads against the film claim, "The fuels that produce carbon dioxide have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor and now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant and what would our lives be like then?" The ads are sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which promotes smoking "as a civil duty." Funded by ExxonMobil, Texaco, Ford Motor Company, Philip Morris and Pfizer, the Institute denies links between severe storms, melting ice caps, droughts and rising sea temperatures.
Despite attacks on the environment by the current rulers and their neo-conservative industry supporters, Americans want to preserve the environment. In March 2006, a TIME magazine/ABC News/Stanford University poll revealed that 88 percent believe global warming threatens future generations and 38 percent view global warming as a serious problem. Two-thirds say Bush's policies did little or nothing to help the environment last year, and 68 percent believe that the government should do more to address global warming. Sixty percent want the government to lower power plant emissions, and 87 percent support tax breaks to develop alternative energy sources.
Evidence from numerous sources reveals that Bush and the Republicans are out of step with most Americans and have been a complete disaster in preserving the environment. They actively encourage industry, land developers and polluters to wantonly extract the nation's natural resources and degrade the air, soil and water, while refusing to rein in oil usage and air pollution or enforce energy conservation. Their blind support of unregulated "free enterprise" to curb consumption and voluntary regulation to halt pollution will work only as long as easy credit and massive Chinese imports make life abundant, if pressured, for the average person. Unfortunately, the effects of the nation's gluttony for oil, automobiles, energy and an exorbitant standard of living have serious repercussions.
With only 5 percent of the world's population, the
In the meantime, the nation will continue to suffer man-made disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina. It's time to place environmental protection at the top of the priority list for national action.
MS/DM
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