Bush's Abysmal Environmental Record - What He Can’t Destroy With Bombs, He Destroys With His Pen

President Bush thinks living in a green house makes him an environmentalist. I think not.

I have watched with amusement the latest apocryphal illusion offered up by the anti-global warming wack-pack. Bush is cajoled into building a green ranch house in Crawford and all of a sudden he is extolled by the reactionary right as a model green citizen. In the meantime, Al Gore, the selfless warrior, is vilified for his energy usage in spite of the reality that he leads an exemplary environmental lifestyle while making a Herculean effort to save our planet. What iniquitous irony is this, that Bush builds a clean, green, dream for Barb and the girls, yet hammers away relentlessly against almost every environmentally friendly effort known to man.

According to David Haymann, the environmentalist, architect and associate dean of the University of Texas architecture department who was contracted to design the home,

Every room has a relationship with something in the landscape that's different from the room next door. Each of the rooms feels like a slightly different place. There's a great grove of oak trees to the west that protects it from the late afternoon sun. Then there is a view out to the north looking at hills, to the east out over a lake, and the view to the south out to beautiful hills.

He was determined to integrate sustainable design into the ranch. The architect presented the contention that,

If you love the land that you inhabit . . . you will do what is necessary to preserve its essence, and implement a design that does not intrude upon the landscape.

Awesome! Good for you Georgie! According to Rob Sullivan, writing in the Chicago Tribune, "Perhaps sound ecological practices are only for those who can afford them. As a self-proclaimed strict constructionist of the U.S. Constitution, Bush must be aware that clean air and clean water are not guaranteed in that glorious document. Perhaps in Bush's Brave New Corporate World, clean natural resources are merely commodities in a free-market economy: if you can pay for them, fine. If not, tough. The rest of us will just have to put up with more toxic dumps and more public lands being turned over to logging, mining and oil companies".

The truth is, there no bigger hypocrite than Bush when it comes to the environment and his shamelessly abysmal record proves it. “Clear Skies” and “Healthy Forests” acts? How stupid does he think we are? Last fall, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney testified before Congress that,

Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of the Interior.

According to, Senator Patrick Leahy,

One of their favorite tactics is announcing environmental rollbacks on Fridays or around holidays when they think the American public will not be paying attention. The Administration has announced at least 40 environmental rollbacks alone on Fridays and another 20 on holidays. These rollbacks demonstrate just how far this Administration has gone in waging its environmental assault; gutting the Clean Air Act, ramping up logging in some of most spectacular national forests, dumping more mining waste on public lands and more sewage sludge on private lands.

The Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Counci report that the Bush administration committed these 300 serious attacks on the environment in his first term alone.

Always eager to submissively prostate himself at the feet of his corporate campaign contributers and Darth Vader's energy advisory board, this in summation is what the Commander In Thief has accomplished for them.

• Toxic Releases Are Up
• Environmental Enforcement Is Down
• Pollution-Related Beach Closings Are Up
• Mercury Contamination Warnings Are Up
• Hazardous Waste Cleanups Are Down
• Perchlorate Contamination Is Widespread
• There is Less Oversight of Refineries
• They Legalized Sewage Dumping in Our Waterways
• Manage National Forests for Forestry Companies
• Drinking Water Contamination Remains Unregulated
• Ceded Public Lands to Energy Companies
• EPA Exempts Pesticides from Clean Water Act

Dubya may strut around on his ranch like the Jolly Green Giant, but that doesn't mitigate the fact that he has routinely introduced legislation and issued executive orders that have served to decimate the environment everywhere else; coordinating a systematic campaign to annul and eviscerate America’s most significant environmental safeguards.

The argument that Bush is a more credible steward of the planet than Al Gore is incongruous burlesque and theatre of the absurd at best.