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July 2006

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The Environment Burns While Bush Fiddles

By Don Monkerud
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July 2006
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I n the 1960s and 1970s the electorate became concerned about the deteriorating environment and urged Congress to pass laws to protect the air, water, forest, animals, and our own health. By the time Kerry ran against Bush, the environment had become a footnote in presidential campaigns. 

The 2004 Republican Party platform revealed absolutely no concern for the environment while stressing the protection of private property and the current economy. Using presidential authority, Bush weakened environmental protections by applying many tactics such as appointing industry lobbyists to head agencies, changing or ignoring rules and enforcement, and passing new laws to negate protections, such as the Healthy Forest Act, the Clean Skies bill, and a massive new energy bill. 

Industry and the Republican Party used a number of schemes to help destroy laws protecting the environment. A third of Bush’s appointments to federal courts worked as lobbyists for polluting industries—such as oil, gas, timber, and mining. By May 2004 Bush had appointed over 100 former lobbyists and company lawyers to head agencies that regulate industry and the environment. In case after case, former lobbyists redefined policies to shift the regulations to favor their former clients, most often polluting industries. 

Bush undid policies to enforce environmental laws by rolling back over 300 regulations. Reversed policies included clean air and clean water regulations, mining regulations, the roadless forest initiative, the Northwest Forest Plan, Sierra Nevada logging policies, the ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park, fisheries management, hazardous waste regulations and coastal zone planning. The Administration encouraged loggers, developers, snowmobilers, and property rights advocates to sue the government to overturn environmental regulations. The Department of Justice, formerly entrusted with enforcing laws, defended environmental laws in language clearly intended to weaken them. 

There are dozens of additional examples. Under Bush, civil penalties imposed by the EPA against polluters set a record 15-year low and cases against refineries and coal-fired power plants declined 90 percent. In August 2003 Bush’s EPA allowed thousands of power plants, oil refineries, and industrial plants to upgrade their operations without reducing pollution. In April 2006 Bush suspended environmental rules for gasoline manufacturing and his Administration continues to push for drilling offshore in the protected Alaskan wilderness and other environmentally fragile areas. 

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted oil and gas drilling on public lands from following the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts and other environmental laws. It allowed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to issue a record 7,000 drilling permits on public lands. Bush oversaw the largest timber sale in modern history—30 square miles—in southwest Oregon, despite over 20,000 citizens’ objections. Bush’s 2007 budget proposes to sell off $1 billion worth of public land—300,000 acres of national forest and 500,000 acres of BLM land. 

Besides the backdoor approach to non-enforcement of laws, farright Congresspeople consider environmental protection bad for profits and constantly seek to repeal or weaken the Wilderness Preservation Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act, and all regulations that restrict private property and commercial development. 

In February 2006 Karl Rove bragged that President Bush has transformed conservatism from “reactionary” to “forward looking” by incorporating “liberal” ideas into foreign policy. Rove claimed Bush was “spreading human liberty and preserving human dignity” with his current environmental policies. The GOP highlighed Bush’s environmental efforts, such as increasing mileage requirements for SUVs by .03 miles per gallon and cutting taxes so people could buy new cars. 

In March 2006 the largest oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope dumped 267,000 gallons of crude oil over 2 acres at the Prudhoe Bay oil production facilities run by BP, Exxon Mobil, and ConocoPhillips. The spill was among the worst in the pipeline’s history. Meanwhile, a May 2006 study by the National Marine Fisheries Service found that the Exxon Valdez oil spill in March 1989 continued to cause long-term damage to wildlife. 

In April 2006 studies revealed that in 2004 the U.S. was the world’s biggest polluter, releasing a record 7.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There are now higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 10 million years. 

NASA reported that 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded, hotter than any time in the past 650,000 years, according to analysis of air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice. The past ten years were the warmest ever recorded, apart from 1996, which was slightly cooler than 1990. The 2005 average global temperature was 58.3 F—the hottest since record keeping began in the late 1800s. Heat waves across Europe killed a record 31,000 people in 2003. 

European flooding is also setting records. In April 2006 the Danube rose to its highest level in 111 years, pushing people from their homes and flooding more than 12,000 acres of farmland. These floods come on the heels of devastating floods last year when heavy rains also caused flooding in Yemen, Colombia, Eastern Europe, northeastern Australia, Indonesia, and northern Argentina. 

In 2005 a dramatic rise in the ocean temperature led to the deaths of birds and fish from Central California to British Columbia. In the Pacific Northwest, fisheries declined for the first time in 50 years and from San Diego to Mendocino fisherpeople reported the lowest fish catch in 23 years. In 2002 Bush caused the largest salmon die-off ever recorded in California when he diverted irrigation water to potato farmers. Similar die-offs of birds and fish occurred in the North Sea, caused by warming water and the disappearance of plankton, forewarning an ecological collapse in the oceans as the world heats up. 

In Newfoundland researchers found populations of five species—roundnose grendadier, onion-eye grenadier, blue hake, spiny eel, and spinytail skate—have declined 89 to 98 percent in the past 17 years. 

Coral death also set a record in May 2006 when the first coral reefs were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Elkhorn and staghorn coral, the main reef-building species in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, declined 80 to 98 percent in the region, due to higher water temperatures. Coral death was virtually unknown 25 years ago, but today dead coral is showing up around the world. 

Last year, parts of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers filled with sandbars as the drainages experienced the worst drought since 1988. Along with drought come forest fires, which are also setting records. In March 2006, 1.8 million acres burned in Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas, the most since record keeping began. 

Climate researchers at Purdue and MIT have found evidence that global warming causes increased hurricane activity, doubling intensity and frequency of storms with each one-quarter-degree increase in average global temperature. In keeping with these findings, last year’s hurricane season broke many records. Other records set include more tropical storms (28), the most hurricanes (15), the largest number of hurricanes hitting the U.S. (4), the most powerful storm ever recorded, and the most Category 5 hurricanes (4). Of the 20 most expensive hurricanes in history, 5 occurred in 2005 and 11 have occurred since 2000. 

Over the past 50 years, temperatures rose more in the high-latitudes of Alaska, Siberia, and the Antarctic Peninsula, which is why Arctic sea ice shrank to its smallest extent ever in 2005. Mount Kilimanjaro will lose its famous snow mantel and the glaciers in Glacier National Park will melt over the next 35 years. Satellite photos show the ice shelf in Antarctica, once thought to be stable for the next 100 years, breaking in only 35 days. 

In June 2001 the National Academy of Sciences reported, “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.” Bush responded to the report, “We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it,” and devoted $25 million to research the subject. Since then, the White House has proposed to reduce enforcement of pollution rules for U.S. industry and energy companies in favor of a voluntary curb on carbon dioxide emissions. 

In April 2006 reports surfaced that the Bush administration was making it difficult for climate research scientists to speak truthfully about global warming. Examples included a 2002 report of the Interior Department censuring a news release because it would cause “great problems in the department.” In November 2005 Bush censors “purged key words from the (press) releases, including ‘global warming,’ ‘warming climate,’ and ‘climate change’.” Officials also attempted to alter what scientists told the media and bar researchers from talking to the media about policy matters. 

Despite attacks on the environment by the current rulers and their neo-conservative industry supporters, Americans want to preserve the environment. In March 2006 a Time magazine/ABC News/Stanford University poll revealed that 88 percent believe global warming threatens future generations and 38 percent view global warming as a serious problem. Two-thirds say Bush’s policies did little or nothing to help the environment last year and 68 percent believe that the government should do more to address global warming; 60 percent want the government to lower power plant emissions and 87 percent support tax breaks to develop alternative energy sources. 

Evidence from numerous sources reveals that Bush and the Republicans have actively encourage industry, land developers, and polluters to wantonly extract the nation’s natural resources and degrade the air, soil, and water while refusing to rein in oil usage and air pollution or enforce energy conservation. 

Global warming is irreversible, but the longer we wait to reverse policies and begin protecting the environment, the larger the climatic shifts and human dislocations will be and the more arbitrary and restrictive the changes necessary to curb the damage.

Don Monkerud is an Aptos, California-based writer who follows cultural, social and political issues. 
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