[greenyes] Second Bush Administration Environmental Agenda

["Peter Anderson" <anderson@no.address>]

THE INDEPENDENT (UK)

Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws
By Geoffrey Lean in Washington
05 December 2004
George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling Congress, 
are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental protection.

In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that they 
will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most important 
environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas drilling, and 
reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures - which, 
ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally established by the 
Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford - even though Mr Bush 
went out of his way to avoid emphasising his environmental plans during his 
campaign.

"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said Mike 
Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that over a third 
of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement over the 
President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with people lenient to 
polluters.

The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open up the 
Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the Senate defeated 
plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar bears , musk oxen and 
millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.

But with the election of four Republican senators in favour of the drilling, 
and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the administration now has the 
votes forvictory.

It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last 
Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation for oil 
and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power stations, 
halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas 
Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is to 
help push through the energy bill, has also announced a comprehensive review 
of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most successful environmental laws.

Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut air 
pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30 years. Not 
to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House Resources Committee, 
Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the Endangered Species Act, for the 
protection of wildlife. The law has been the main obstacle to the felling of 
much of the US's remaining endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, 
Congressional leaders have also announced an attack on the National 
Environmental Policy Act, which requires details of the environmental 
effects of major developments before they proceed.

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last week 
that the previous Bush administration had largely contented itself with 
weakening environmental legislation, but the new one intended to go much 
further. He added: "We will now see an assault on the law which will set the 
US in the direction of becoming a Third World country in terms of 
environmental protection."

The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on 
environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green majority.

They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by the 
former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s - which caused 
such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green legislation.

"..."

_________________________
Peter Anderson, President
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