Bush and the environment
One of the things Molly Ivins was telling us about before we got Dubya as "The only president we got" was his abysmal record on the environment as governor of Texas. You know, his silly programs that got companies to "voluntarily" comply with environmental restrictions. Well, he got it. Companies that were shutting down anyway "voluntarily" complied. Companies that were still going concerns didn't "volunteer".
He's at it again, this time at the national level. With the repeal of the new source review, energy companies are taking advantage of the American people. It's the old "tragedy of the commons" problem. They don't have to bear the cost of their pollution, the citizens downwind of them do. And so the energy companies don't cut their emissions. And they basically stonewalled the Clinton administration, and donated millions to the Bush campaign.
Trouble is, a majority of people want the environment to be clean, and want sensible regulation so that people don't get sick from pollution. So, the Bush administration's tactics have been the same as on many other issues. Demonize the regulation, make it a false choice between jobs and clean air, or pretend that the "science isn't conclusive," when in truth only industry shills are saying there's any debate.
Bruce Barcott has a fantastic article in the New York Times Magazine this weekend. I've only gotten halfway through it; the other half is my bedtime reading tonight. This is an important article. Go look at it, print it out and read it. It may be too much to be swallowed in one bite. Then, pass it on to your friends who might be on the fence with regard to the presidential race, or even might be Republicans. Ask them if this is the kind of world they want to live in. See if they still want to vote for Bush after reading this.
New York Times: Changing All the Rules:
Of the many environmental changes brought about by the Bush White House, none illustrate the administration's modus operandi better than the overhaul of new-source review. The president has had little success in the past three years at getting his environmental agenda through Congress. His energy bill remains unpassed. His Clear Skies package of clean-air laws is collecting dust on a committee shelf. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge remains closed to oil and gas exploration.
But while its legislative initiatives have languished on Capitol Hill, the administration has managed to effect a radical transformation of the nation's environmental laws, quietly and subtly, by means of regulatory changes and bureaucratic directives. Overturning new-source review -- the phrase itself embodies the kind of dull, eye-glazing bureaucrat-speak that distracts attention -- represents the most sweeping change, and among the least noticed.
(snip)
Having long flouted the new-source review law, many of the nation's biggest power companies were facing, in the last months of the 1990's, an expensive day of reckoning. E.P.A. investigators had caught them breaking the law. To make amends, the power companies were on the verge of signing agreements to clean up their plants, which would have delivered one of the greatest advances in clean air in the nation's history. Then George W. Bush took office, and everything changed.