| Each generation has a responsibility to pass along the natural environment to the next generation in a condition as good or better than it was received. |
| The Bush administration has the most wreckless environmental policies in recent history. President Bush has turned the agencies charged with environmental protection over to people who don’t believe in it. To run the Interior Department he chose a long-time defender of polluters who has opposed laws to safeguard wildlife, habitat, and public lands. To run the Forest Service he chose a timber industry lobbyist. To oversee our public lands he named a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional. To run the Superfund he chose a woman who made a living advising corporate polluters how to evade the Superfund. And in the White House office of environmental policy, the president placed a lobbyist from the American Petroleum Institute whose mission was to make sure the government’s scientific reports on global warming didn’t contradict the party line and the interest of oil companies. Everywhere you look, the foxes own the chicken coop. Source: "Caring For Creation" - Bill Moyers - October 07, 2005 The Earth is sending us a message and you don't have to be an environmentalist to read it. The Arctic ice is melting. The Arctic winds are balmy. The Arctic Ocean is rising. Scientists say that in the year 2002 -- the second-hottest on record -- they saw the Arctic ice coverage shrink more than at any time since they started measuring it. Every credible scientific study in the world says human activity is creating global warming. In the face of this evidence, the government in Washington has declared war on nature. They have placed religious and political dogma over the facts. Every policy of government that is bad or goes wrong can ultimately be reversed. The environment is the one exception to the rule of politics, which is that to every action there is a reaction. By the time we all wake up, by the time the media starts doing their job and by the time the public sees what is happening, it may be too late to reverse it. That's what science is telling us. That's what the Earth is telling us...This absence of vision as to what happens when you foul your nest puzzles me. Source: grist magazine - "Now Hear This" - Bill Moyers interview by Amanda Griscom - 8/29/03 The latest brass-balls moxie episode was President Bush's Monday visit to the Detroit Edison power plant in Monroe, Mich., which he actually touted as a "living example" of why his dandy Clear Skies (gag me) initiative is so good for us all. "You're good stewards of the quality of the air," Bush told the plant's pleased workers. The Monroe plant is one of the worst polluters in the country: In 2001, it sent 102,700 tons of sulfur dioxide, the leading cause of acid rain, into the atmosphere, along with 45,900 tons of nitrogen oxide, 810 pounds of mercury and 17.6 million tons of carbon dioxide. A study done in 2000 by ABT Associates, which the Environmental Protection Agency has used to measure the health effects of pollution, says the plant annually causes 293 premature deaths, 5,740 asthma attacks and 50,298 lost work days. Under Clear Skies (these people are going to kill irony), the plant will continue to shed this gentle beneficence on us all for the next 17 years. According to environmental groups, the administration's relaxation of clean air rules, known as the "new source review," will allow the plant to increase its emissions by more than 30,000 tons a year, a 56 percent increase. Source: "Choking on 'Clear Skies' Orwellian initiative would freshen license for nation's foulest polluters" -- Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate - 9/18/03 The Clear Skies plan would "generate millions more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and allow three times more mercury emissions than current law." And according to EPA estimates, "the plan would have the effect of raising the amount of coal burned by power companies... potentially generating 50 percent more sulfur emissions and delaying by up to 10 years major cuts in sulfur emissions required by the Clean Air Act." Source: (League of Conservation Voters 2003 Presidential Report Card) via DeanForAmerica.com Deputy Secretary of the Interior J. Steven Griles … has a personal financial stake in leasing our public lands for oil and gas development. Griles is a "former" oil and gas lobbyist who still receives $284,000.00 a year from his old firm, National Environmental Strategies. During the Reagan administration, Griles was involved in selling 17,000 acres of federal land to a private company for $42,000, well below market value. Several months later, the buyers resold the land, and turned a $37 million profit. Source: WorkingForChange.org -- "Son of James Watt" by Adam Werbach -- 8/25/03 Smokey Joe's [Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Ennis, Texas] provisions …would extend the deadline for…polluted metropolitan areas to clean their air and ... would protect manufacturers of MTBE from lawsuits when the carcinogenic gasoline additive contaminates groundwater. The [national energy] bill isn't the ticket to national energy independence that its advocates claim. Rather, it would make the United States more dependent on fossil fuels by failing to adequately promote such renewable energy sources as hydrogen, solar and wind and to take advantage of energy conservation. Indeed, the bill is so stacked with favors to polluters that it deserves to die.. Source: Dallas Morning News -- "Energy Bill Held Hostage - Barton attempts to make a bad bill worse" - 10/28/03 The contention is consistently made that environmental legislation is bad for the economy. That is "political speak" that should be translated. What it actually means is that prohibiting corporations from dumping filth and toxins in the air we breathe, the soil from which we grow our food, and the water we drink costs the people that fund right-wing political campaigns money. George Bush claims that relaxing environmental regulations creates jobs. If there is a correlation between environmental regulation and job creation/loss, it contradicts that claim. During the relatively environmentally friendly Clinton administration, we saw record setting employment. Under the environmentally devastating Bush administration, we see record setting unemployment levels. If we insist on having the products these polluting processes produce, we must find a way to produce them without dumping toxins into the air, water and soil, or we must bear the expense of cleaning the resulting mess up. It is immoral to spend a generation polluting the environment and leave our mess for future generations. (And "somebody's money" does not constitute a legitimate excuse!) |
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