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[GreenYes] Environmental Rollbacks
- Subject: [GreenYes] Environmental Rollbacks
- From: Ann Schneider <schneiderann@juno.com>
- Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 17:41:59 -0700
Environmental Rollbacks
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/08/opinion/08SUN1.html
April 8, 2001
Environmental Rollbacks
Republican moderates are exasperated by President Bush's posture on
environmental issues. They are not alone. In less than three months
Mr. Bush has begun to remind people of the country's last genuinely
anti-environmental president, Ronald Reagan. But where Mr. Reagan's
attitude was one of careless indifference — "You've seen one redwood,
you've seem 'em all," was a typical Reaganism — Mr. Bush's retreat on
issues as large as global warming and as localized as poisoned
drinking water seems aggressively hostile.
It could also be politically ruinous. The president says he must
soften environmental rules to prevent a recession. He thus revives
the historically insupportable notion that economic progress and
environmental protection are incompatible. Further, Mr. Bush appears
to have forgotten that Republicans inevitably self-destruct when they
challenge environmental values that command public support. Newt
Gingrich's hard-line agenda on everything from clean water to
endangered species in the mid-1990's succeeded only in energizing the
Democrats and persuading Bill Clinton to embark on the aggressive
program of wilderness protection that Mr. Bush now seeks to repudiate.
If there has been any unifying theme to Mr. Bush's policies, it has
been his eagerness to please the oil, gas and mining industries —
indeed, extractive industries of all kinds. The oil and coal mining
companies helped shape his decision to withdraw from the Kyoto
Protocol on climate change as well as his earlier reversal of a
campaign pledge to impose mandatory limits on carbon dioxide. These
were hasty and ill-conceived decisions that have essentially left the
United States without a policy on a matter of global importance.
The mining industry also had a hand in two other rollbacks. One was a
decision to withdraw a Clinton rule that reduced by 80 percent the
permissible standard for arsenic in drinking water. The other was a
decision by Interior Secretary Gale Norton to suspend important new
regulations that would require mining companies to pay for cleanups
and, for the first time, give the Interior Department authority to
prohibit mines that could cause "irreparable harm" to the environment.
Mr. Bush seems to be backing off his plan to open the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, in part because Congress will not
support him. But other sensitive and ecologically significant areas,
particularly in the Rocky Mountains, remain vulnerable. Ms. Norton
has targeted some 17 million acres of land, in 11 Western states, now
designated as wilderness study areas. Mr. Bush is prepared to open up
the 19 national monuments created by Mr. Clinton. And the
administration has signaled a retreat on Mr. Clinton's most ambition
conservation measure — a Forest Service rule protecting nearly 60
million acres of largely untouched national forest from new road
building, new oil and gas leasing and most new logging.
Killing that plan would represent a big victory not only for the
timber companies but also for the the oil and gas industries.
Although the roadless areas contain less than 1 percent of the
nation's oil and gas resources, the energy companies have long had
the forests in their sights. During his distinguished tenure as Mr.
Clinton's Forest Service chief, Mike Dombeck managed to keep the
drillers at bay. But Mr. Dombeck has now retired to private life,
along with nearly every other friend of the environment from the
Clinton administration. With few exceptions, they have been replaced
by industry lobbyists and hard-edged advocates of development. It
will be Congress's job to hold the line against them.
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