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Bush Environment Year One: Common Sense or Offense?
WASHINGTON, DC, January 25, 2002 (ENS) - Actions speak louder than
words in the view of environmental groups rating the performance of
President George W. Bush in the year since he took office.
Ratings released by the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural
Resources Defense Council, Public Employees for Environmental
Responsibility, and The Wilderness Society this week all gave scathing
reviews of Bush's environmental record.
 President George W. Bush (Photo courtesy
The White House)
Abandonment of the Kyoto climate protocol which was signed by all other
industrialized nations, an energy policy based on coal, oil, gas and
nuclear energy rather than renewables, breaking a campaign pledge to curb
carbon dioxide emissions at the behest of power companies, and absolving
mining companies from the responsibility for cleaning up their pollution
are some of the environmentally damaging policies of the Bush
administration, the conservation groups say.
Bush defends his environmental policies by saying, as he did at a press
conference March 29, 2001, "Ours is going to be an administration that
makes decisions on science, what's realistic, common sense decisions."
Bush said "circumstances had changed since he made his campaign promise to
cut the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that are a primary cause of global
warming. The country's "energy crisis" is the reason "why I decided to not
have mandatory caps on CO2," said the President, "because in order to meet
those caps, our nation would have had to have had a lot of natural gas
immediately flow into the system, which is impossible. We don't have the
infrastructure."
The President said he reversed U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol, an
international treaty that commits industrialized countries to reduce
emissions of carbon dioxide an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels
during the five year period 2008 to 2012, because it "will harm our economy
and hurt American workers."
Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters, says, "As
President Bush continues to pay lip service to the importance of protecting
the environment while America strengthens its economy, citizens should know
that the reality of his record doesn't match his rhetoric."
The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released its 2001 Presidential
Report Card Thursday, giving President Bush's overall environmental
performance a D minus. The 32 page report grades the administration on
appointments (D), budget (D plus), and initiatives (F) ranging from energy
and climate change (F) to pollution and public health (D).
After President Bill Clinton's first year in office, the LCV released a
similar report card marking his environmental performance C plus.
The League of Conservation Voters gave the President poor marks for his
choice of former Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton as head of the
Interior Department, because she "spent a career undermining the very
environmental laws she was appointed to enforce."
But President Bush firmly supports his choice of Norton, saying May 30
during a visit with her to California's Sequoia National Park, "She's a
common sense person who cares deeply about our national park system, and
about our nation's environment."
Norton and the rest of the Bush administration support drilling for oil and
gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a proposal that the
environmental groups say will degrade the pristine refuge to produce about
six months worth of oil that will not even be available for 10 years.
 Conservationists fear wildlife like this Arctic
fox will be decimated by drilling in ANWR. (Photo courtesy Arctic Power)
The Wilderness Society says, "The administration is using the stepped-up
interest in national security as a rationale for allowing oil drilling on
the refuge's storied coastal plain. Norton has appeared at press
conferences with other drilling proponents to urge the Senate to approve
Arctic Refuge development on these grounds, even though the most likely
output, based on U.S. Geological Service estimates, would have little or no
impact on oil imports."
"Later in the year," The Wilderness Society said, "the administration
decided that drilling on the coastal plain would not violate a five nation
polar bear treaty, though the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had issued two
reports in the 1990s saying that it would."
Bush told reporters last March 29, "We need to have an active exploration
program. One of the big debates that's taking place in the Congress, or
will take place in the Congress, is whether or not we should be exploring
for natural gas in Alaska, for example, in ANWR. I strongly think we should
in order to make sure that we've got enough gas to be able to help reduce
greenhouse emissions in the country. See, gas is clean, and yet there is
not enough of it. And we've got pipeline capacity problems in the country.
We have an energy shortage."
That argument cuts no ice with environmental groups. Callaghan of the LCV
says the proposal to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is "part
of an energy plan drafted by corporate interests behind closed doors."
President Bush claims labor leaders support drilling for oil and gas in the
Arctic Refuge because it will provide jobs.
 Winter construction, Alaska (Photo
courtesy Arctic Power)
But John Hovis, general president of the United Electrical, Radio and
Machine Workers of America said in July 2001, "The Bush-Cheney scheme to
drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and to encourage oil
and gas drilling in other sensitive areas of our country is no solution.
The large energy corporations who have crafted the Bush-Cheney plan are
merely looking to cash in on their election 'investment' at the expense of
the environment and consumers."
Bush told a labor audience on January 17, "When we explore for power, U.S.
power, U.S. energy in ANWR, we're not only helping us become less dependent
on foreign sources of crude oil and foreign sources of energy, we're
creating jobs for American workers, jobs so that men and women can put food
on the table."
The Bush administration's energy policy, drafted last spring by a group
chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney is now the subject of Congressional
investigations into the influence wielded by now bankrupt energy giant
Enron. But despite continued requests from Congress, the White House has
refused to turn over documents detailing the closed door energy policy
meetings.
Gregory Wetstone, director of advocacy for the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC), said this week, "Our landmark environmental laws face the
gravest challenge since the assaults of the Newt Gingrich Congress of 1995,
and perhaps ever. The threat this time is more insidious, and potentially
more dangerous. The Bush administration is quietly subverting federal
agency rules that translate environmental laws into specific requirements
for industry."
 Interior Secretary Gale Norton announces more
renewable energy installations on public lands. (Photo courtesy
Interior Dept.)
The NRDC report, "Rewriting the Rules: The Bush Administration's Unseen
Assault on the Environment," provides a review of federal agency actions
since September 11 and an appendix of all actions since the Bush
administration too over last January. The report also details the White
House Office of Management and Budget's efforts to weaken environmental
safeguards by twisting the regulatory process to benefit industry at the
expense of public health and the environment.
Wetstone said, "Since September 11, with public attention on the war on
terrorism, the administration's assaults have quietly grown in scope and
virulence. Instead of directly challenging popular environmental laws,
the Bush administration has instructed federal agencies to render them
mere words on paper, irrelevant to what polluters and developers do in
the real world."
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national
alliance of local state and federal resource professionals, working to
protect the environment, said this week that their most recent analysis of
environmental enforcement during President Bush's first year in office
shows "a steep decline."
Cases referred by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for
criminal prosecution dropped by a 20 percent overall during the 2001 fiscal
year. Toxic Substance Control Act referrals were down 80 percent; Clean Air
Act referrals were down 54 percent; and Clean Water Act referrals were down
53 percent, PEER found.
"This downturn reflects cases through September of 2001 and does not include
effects of EPA staff reassignments announced last month. EPA stated that
about 40 percent of its criminal enforcement staff would be moved to
non-environmental security tasks," PEER said.
Earlier this month, the non-profit public interest law firm Earthjustice
said in the first year of George W. Bush's presidency, environmental
protections have taken a back seat to industry concerns. "Under this
administration the courts have become the forum of choice for rolling back
environmental protections," Earthjustice Executive Director Buck
Parker said.
Since the Bush administration took office, Parker said January 8, "A
disturbing pattern has developed in which industry sues to
overturn environmental regulations and the Justice Department, led
by Attorney General John Ashcroft, puts up only the feeblest of
defenses and refuses to appeal adverse decisions."
There are bright spots in the Bush environmental record. The League of
Conservation Voters approves of the appointment of former New Jersey
Governor Christie Todd Whitman as a "moderate" EPA administrator.
 President Bush signs the Small Business
Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act in Conshohocken,
Pennsylvania. (Left to right) Congressmen Paul Gillmor of Ohio, and Robert
Borski of Pennsylvania, State Attorney General Mike Fisher, EPA
Administrator Christie Todd Whitman, Pennsylvania Congressman Joseph
Hoeffel and Pennsylvania Governor Mark Schweiker. (Photo by Eric
Draper courtesy The White House)
On January 11, the President signed a bill that supports the cleanup and
renewal of brownfields, former industrial sites that are now abandoned. At
the signing ceremony on a former brownfields site in Pennsylvania, the
President said the new law fights urban sprawl by redeveloping brownfields.
The law offers "protection against lawsuits to prospective buyers and
others who didn't create the brownfields, but want to help clean them up
and develop them," the President said. "And it will help strengthen state
cleanup programs, with more federal funding and less federal meddling. My
budget for next year will meet this commitment by requesting that Congress
double EPA's brownfields funding."
The administration's budget for 2003 will also include funding for
development of renewable energy on public lands, an energy option that
appeals to environmental groups.
But a Wilderness Society report issued last week in advance of the
president's State of the Union address set for Tuesday documented efforts
to cripple plans that would protect national parks from off-road vehicle
traffic, undermine a policy safeguarding roadless national forest land, and
turn the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge into a sprawling oil complex. The
document also catalogued decisions that threaten wetlands, clean air, the
California coastline, and the national monuments created the past five
years.
 Roads and logging can fragment forests,
like this area of the Willamette National Forest in Oregon (Photo by Steve
Holmer, courtesy American Lands) (Photo courtesy )
"This administration has been bad news for our air, water, wildlife, and
wilderness-for the state of our environment, period," said William Meadows,
president of The Wilderness Society. "Because of the nation's focus on the
war against terrorism, a lot of the things they have done have gone
unnoticed. But if the word manages to get out, we expect to see broad
public criticism of this awful record."
Environmental groups point to a shift in emphasis from disclosure to
non-disclosure in response to Freedom of Information Act requests that they
say will make getting the truth about the administration's actions on
forest protection, off-road vehicles, mining, and oil and gas drilling more
difficult to obtain.
The Wilderness Society said, "Secretary Norton frames her agenda as the
"4-Cs, communication, consultation, and cooperation, all in the service of
conservation." Based on her first year in office, that seems to mean
communication with the oil industry, consultation with off-road vehicle
manufacturers, and cooperation with the mining industry, all in the service
of conservation of their bottom lines. Three high-ranking administration
officials went to Spokane last month to attend a meeting of the Northwest
Mining Association and told the audience that they wanted to work with the
mining industry to soften regulations approved in recent years."
Environmental groups note the same pattern of reversing Clinton era
protection of roadless areas. They note the efforts of the U.S. Forest
Service to roll back a policy barring logging and road building on 58.5
million acres of roadless national forest land in 44 states. "The
administration's goal is to turn over the decisions to individual forests,
allowing major input from the logging industry," The Wilderness Society
alleges.
The Forest Service is now reviewing hundreds of thousands of public
comments on this subject submitted by the September 10 deadline, and
proposed amendments are expected early this year.
The NRDC calls the actions by Bush administration agencies "a coordinated
attack on key environmental safeguards." The nearly 80 agency actions span
the spectrum of the nation's most important environmental programs,
including those protecting our air, water, forests, wildlife and public
lands. The group says and other environmental organizations agree that,
"the administration intensified its efforts after September 11, when public
attention was diverted by the war on terrorism."
Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2002. All rights reserved. |
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