It was a bad summer for environmental protection. And from the looks of some of President Bush's more recent policy initiatives, it is shaping up to be a bad fall, in a bad year, during a bad administration when it comes to preserving the health and safety of our air, land and water.
In June, it hit the news wires that the Bush administration ordered a rewrite of an EPA report on global warming. The report was apparently so heavily changed that, according to an EPA memo cited by the Associated Press, it
o longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change.""
Specific changes? The omission of statements like climate change ""has global consequences for human health and the environment,"" and the substitution of information showing a rise in global warming during the 1990s with studies funded in part by the American Petroleum Institute.
From the earliest days of Bush's campaign, it was clear that an impending Bush administration would place other priorities above the environment. With 9/11, this downgrading of environmental, and in many cases human health, issues has been pushed even lower on the ""to-do list,"" at least in a constructive sense and in publicity.
Since 9/11, war, terrorism and the economy have dominated the media. The almost exclusive public focus of Team Bush on national security has masked what amounts to nothing less than an all-out assault on long-standing environmental protections. Sure, the current administration may not prioritize environmental protection, but they sure do rank pretty high any program that has the possibility of destroying the environment.
A simple search of news stories in the last two weeks brings up the following gems of enlightened, compassionate conservatism:
On Aug. 25, the General Accounting Office released its report on the National Energy Policy Development Group headed up by Vice President Cheney. The report outlined the failure of Cheney and other officials to fully disclose information regarding how the new energy initiatives were formed. The energy task force has been charged with excluding scholars and environmentalists from the process while meeting most frequently with representatives from the energy sector.
On Aug. 28, various news agencies ran articles talking about reports coming out of the EPA that Washington was soon to rule that CO2 is not a pollutant, and hence its emissions cannot be regulated. The reason? The Bush Administration does not feel there is sufficient evidence to claim that CO2 is the cause of global warming and hence a pollutant. This is despite President Bush's own statements during his campaign that CO2 was just that: a pollutant.
On Aug. 29, Bush gutted the 1977 New Source Review amendment to the Clean Air Act mandating coal power plants have better pollution control. The EPA issued a new rule allowing these plants to include any sort of change to the facility under ""routine maintenance"" which exempts those renovations from meeting pollution control standards. This move to expand the ability of coal power plants to skirt environmental regulation goes against yet another campaign promise to limit emissions from these facilities.
On Sept. 6, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., promised to block Bush's nominee for the top job at the Environmental Protection Agency when it was discovered that the EPA may have made false assurances of air safety after 9/11. According to the internal report, the EPA was pressured to give assurances to New Yorkers that the air at Ground Zero was safe to breath only days after the attack. The White House apparently ""convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones,"" according to the report released by the EPA inspector general on Aug. 23.
While the administration has not commented on the new report, it had previously defended its decision based on national security concerns. Surprised? There is nothing to suggest that these last two weeks are anything out of the ordinary. The reason these stories weren't blasting across the top of newspapers is that for the most part they are little steps and steps which were not announced with the vigor given to initiatives like tax breaks and military spending.
It's the classic game of diversion. We are told, ""Look: terror, nukes, money, Osama!"" while dramatic changes to other areas of life slip past in our periphery. This is by no means to say that there should not be a focus placed on issues like the economy and war, but to do so at the exclusion of all other issues is ludicrous. This is especially terrible when significant changes are being made without the honesty and forthrightness to expose them to public scrutiny. Does changing a few rules in the Clean Air Act or diverting water spell ecological apocalypse? No. But can the sum of these steps taken over years do tremendous harm? Certainly.
What is particularly odious about the moves being made to change environmental policy is that they are happening through bullying organizations like the EPA and taking measures not directly overseen by Congress. But would you expect anything less? If you are trying to get away with something, you usually do not advertise you are doing it or give people a way of stopping you.
