Bush's Environmental Record

The Bush administration has initiated more than 150 policy decisions that are destructive to the environmental quality of the nation, this according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental watchdog group. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the group’s lead attorney was quoted as saying; “America’s environmental laws have succeeded in improving and protecting our air, water, lands and quality of life. Today it is clearer than ever that these laws now face a fundamental threat more sweeping and dangerous than any since the dawn of the modern environmental movement.” At heart of the criticism is the constant alteration by the Bush administration of key environmental laws, by creating loopholes and generally loosening such laws.

The administration has;

· allowed a higher minimum level of arsenic (a toxic poison ) in the drinking water supplies, before corrective measures must be taken;

· has relaxed safeguards by promoting logging in virgin national forests and preserves and opened the door for oil and gas exploration on such lands;

· loosened restrictions on untreated sewage to be released into waterways;

· granted special exemptions for Florida to allow dumping of sewage into deep wells even though studies by the government establish that such acts will contaminate drinking water supplies in the state;

· declared (May 27, 2004) that information regarding water supply, inclusive of its quality, will henceforth not be a matter of public record, essentially dropping a veil of secrecy and limiting the public’s right to know;

· through the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, chosen to ignore recommendations by the National Academy of Science to implement new safeguards in the testing of water, seeking greater and more accurate identification of hazards to human health;

· failed to ratify or accept the Kyoto global warming treaty, which some believe led Christine T. Whitman, EPA chief, to resign in quiet protest. Whitman also found herself at odds with the administration, numerous times. Bush consistently overruled EPA initiatives on clean air, and water, publicly embarrassing the EPA chief.

On February 18, 2004 a letter of protest was signed by some of the most prominent and leading scientists of the U.S. which included Nobel laureates, medical experts, former federal agency directors, University chairs and Presidents, voicing concern over the Bush administration’s misuse of science, to support questionable initiatives.

Vocal critics of the administration’s policies have also included the Primatologist, Jane Goodall, who has dubbed the Bush administration as a threat to the world’s endangered species. Goodall did extensive research on primate behavior in Africa. She was knighted by the Queen of England last year, and previously was named Messenger of Peace by the General Secretary of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, in 2002.

A few months ago, the Bush administration lost a court case that attempted to criminalize Greenpeace activists who had boarded a ship, April 12th 2002, that was bringing illegally logged, mahogany, lumber from the Amazon rain forest. The government also sought to criminalize Greenpeace, as the sponsoring organization, of the protest action. On May 19, 2004, however, Federal Judge Adalberto Jordan dismissed the case citing insufficient evidence. Environmental activists cited the attempted prosecution as an unprecedented assault on the freedom of speech and on the right to protest and dissent.

Earlier this week, John Kerry, Democratic candidate for President, criticized the Bush administration’s intention to truck radioactive waste on the nation’s highways, through 44 states to Nevada, to be buried inside Yucca mountain, 100 miles north of Las Vegas. In 2000 Bush had promised to veto any such plan. At a rally in Nevada, Kerry was quoted as saying, “what we need now is the reverse of that; we need a Manhattan Project that learns how to tame the negative consequences of that power of the atom.” The radioactive waste, which is to be shipped from the nation’s radioactive energy plants, will pose a danger to humans for the next 10,000 years. Currently the Bush administration is proposing to commit to building 1,000 new nuclear facilities by 2020.

Since 1999, 30 power companies that own the nation’s most polluting power plants raised $6.6 million for President Bush and the Republican National Committee, according to Public Citizen (May 2003). Executives at 10 of these companies have raised at least between $100,000 and $200,000 each, for the Bush campaign.

D.S. Staff Writer

Posted:  August 12, 2004

URL:  www.thecitizenfsr.org                     SM 2000-2004