Environmental Musings

Please take a moment and consider this.

No one seems to care much about the environment and if they do, their concern is often expressed quietly and quickly forgotten. Perhaps since there are no visceral images of people dying, as there are in hurricanes, wars and famine, people just can't wrap their hands around the seriousness of the threat to our planet. It's not nightly news stuff and there are no images and sounds to convey the danger. Just scientists and activists trying their best to get people to care.

I'm going to try to do my part here and if some of my friends and acquaintances are offended, well I am sorry. I particularly want to address this to my friends who are hunters and fisherman and nature lovers and inexplicably . . . conservatives. If you care about the lands you hunt on, the waters you fish in and the air your family breathe, maybe you will set aside your political agenda and unite with us all to save the only earth we have. Or you can shut your eyes and ears to what you cannot see or hear and just go on and live your life without caring what kind of world your children inherit from you.

The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, our forests, wildlife, the atmosphere that protects us, the all important temperature of the oceans . . . . . they are all in dire danger of being damaged beyond repair. This current administration is supporting legislation and an activist agenda that clearly sacrifices the environment for the benefit of large corporate interests whose bottom line profits are intrinsically tied to exploiting the earth's resources and avoiding the financial commitments to curb their greenhouse gas emissions and polluting.

Corporations engaged in clear-cutting our forests including old growth redwoods, rampant drilling for oil, mining for coal, land development, chemical manufacturing and a myriad of other industries are being given a free pass to do as they will to the environment in pursuit of the bottom line. Aside from threatening this planets physical future, these polluters contribute substantially to lung disorders like asthma, heart disease, increased hospitalizations and medical costs and premature death for millions of unsuspecting people worldwide.

Let's look at some of the facts, not hyperbole but facts:

The Bush administration has recommended opening up all 155 of our National Forests to logging without concern or consideration for the wildlife that inhabits these lands.

1. The Bush administration wants to change the Clean Air Act to allow 20,000 power plants to release more pollutants into the air.
2. The Bush administration has recommended treating Mercury pollution released by power plants as a non-hazardous substance. There are 45 states currently that post mercury contamination warning signs and mercury is known to cause birth defects and learning disorders.
3. The Bush administration has recommended allowing oil drilling in some of America's most sensitive eco-systems such as Yellowstone Park, Otero Mesa in New Mexico, Canyonlands and Dinosaur National Monument in Utah.
4. The Bush administration is actively supporting logging in Alaska's Tongass Wilderness, the earth's largest remaining rainforest.
5. Cleanup work at toxic waste sites in eighteen states will be severely curtailed or in some cases halted under a Bush administration plan to reduce spending for the nation's Superfund program, according to an analysis by Bush’s own Environmental Protection Agency.
6. The Bush administration has also decided not to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and has rejected a 1997 climate treaty broadly accepted by our European allies.
7. We all know by now they support developing the environmentally fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and their energy plan indicates their intention to drill for oil and gas under the Great Lakes.
8. Bush, after faulting the Kyoto climate treaty for excluding developing nations from its requirements, wants to cut U.S. aid for helping Third World countries combat global warming and proposes reducing assistance to other countries by $41 million from last year's $165 million.
9. A major tactic of the Bush administration has been to take advantage of the right wing’s ongoing smear campaign against former president Clinton to rollback many of the environmental safeguards he set in place. For example, the Bush administration wants to put on hold and re-examine a Clinton-era program spelling out federally required state cleanup plans for thousands of lakes and rivers around the nation The broad cleanup plans issued last year were intended to reduce storm water and agriculture runoff polluting about 21,000 lakes, ponds, streams and rivers across the country.
10. Bush wants to scale back a Clinton administration rule aimed at reducing pollution emissions from older coal-fired power plants.
11. Bush has revoked some requirements imposed on developers during the Clinton presidency, including one requiring them to restore or create an acre of wetlands for every acre they fill. This would allow speedy government approval of their projects if their impact on streams or marshes is considered minimal.
12. The corps also eliminated revoked some restrictions on development in flood plains. The Bush administration also proposed cutting NASA's climate change research by $90 million, or almost 8 percent from last year's $1.2 billion and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has repealed a Clinton-era rule favored by unions that prevents the government from awarding contracts to businesses that have broken environmental, labor, tax or other federal laws.

Do we care yet?

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.

A Time To Speak Out

In this tumultuous political climate and rapidly changing world, more often then not many have opted for shutting up rather than speaking out. We don't want to offend our neighbors, co-workers, friends, even our parents and close family. This instinct to keep one's beliefs close to the vest was exacerbated by the wave of jingoistic patriotism and fear that followed 9-11 and many were afraid. Not of the terrorists, but of our own government.

The world and US citizens were told, "you are with us or you are against us" and a slim, dubious at best electoral win turned into an indefensible toe-the-line and do what we say thinly veiled threat, colored by blanket indictments of non-patriotism for even mouthing a contrarian opinion. The power of the people to redress their grievances along with most everything else ever espoused by monsieur’s Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin was forgotten with the pathetic complicity of the press (God forbid we don't get a good seat at the press briefing) and even more amazingly, the Democratic party. Herr Limbaugh, and Hannity et al mouthed the talking points of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz egged on to a cacophonous hysteria by the likes of Ann Coulter and Micheal Regan.

All the time Bush dangled feebly at the end of his puppet strings with his voice never quite matching his mouth. Ever the optimist I think that just perhaps the defense has held and the sleeping giant that is an American public that still believes in true patriotism and justice; has awakened. Katrina, Iraq, and the rest may have finally pushed the people too far and just maybe the press are pissed off as well at their manipulation, un-wanted subpoenas and the lies they spread. One can only hope the people are back in the game and will sustain the drive to retake our democratic republic with fervor supported by moral certitude and the backbone that has been missing for six years. It's not too late; almost, but we can recover.

There is a difference . . . stand up and make your voice heard and do it now. You're an American, it's your birthright, it's your obligation and it's time to speak out!

What Do We Deserve?

Never before has there been such a serious dearth of leadership in this country. On the domestic front, inflation might be rearing it's ugly head once again; has anyone even noticed the Fed's steady rate increases which are predicted to continue for the foreseeable future? Gasoline is hovering around $3 per gallon and the bottom has started to fall out of the housing market which many credit for artificially propping up our economy. The middle class is under a steady attack and the gap between the wealthy and the poor is wider than ever before. Nothing has been done to address the serious issues that face us such as health care, tax reform, and immigration policy in this country and Bush's faux brand of compassionate conservatism has only served to exacerbate another widening gap in this country, the one between secularists and the religious right. Seeking no common ground, the Bush administration has instead driven wedge issues such as gay marriage and abortion rights deep between them and is stacking the court with right-wing ideologies to insure these divisive issues continue to plague America for decades to come. With his poll numbers hovering around 30% and the White House under siege due to the ongoing Iraq debacle; Bush's administration has never been so ineffectual but beware the wounded beast and the power of presidential decrees.

On the world stage, Bush's foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster with previously supportive governments practically shunning the US president as of late. It is as if they were saying to him; you are irrelevant and we are waiting for you to leave the world stage. Iraq continues to be a huge problem, costly in both human life and US prestige and world tensions have never been so obvious and troubling. Our attacking of a sovereign country on false premises served only to embolden terrorists and their recruiting. It will be interesting to say the least and revelatory to see what statements if any the American people make in 2008. Try as they may to run, Republicans wear the cloak of the Bush administration and hopefully the American people are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. If not, if apathy and hopelesness prevail, well, we will get what we deserve . . . again.