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To the items below add landfill deregulation, gasification of garbage, allowing export of toxic e-waste, and more. Learn and take action at the GrassRoots Recycling Network's website at http://www.GRRN.org/subsidies/epa/index.html.
New York
Times (Editorial) November
2, 2002 UNDER THE
POLITICAL RADAR
Environmental issues are not resonating with
voters in
this midterm election the way they usually
do. This is as much a rebuke to the Democrats
as it is a tribute to the administration's ability to hide its assault on
the rules
protecting the nation's natural resources
under the political radar. According
to the polls, the environment commands voter
interest about on a par with taxes, above crime and
corporate malfeasance but below the economy,
education and health care. Environmental issues could yet make the
difference
in several tight races, Colorado and New
Hampshire among them. But its national impact is
not nearly what it was in 1996, when voters
hammered Newt Gingrich and his Contract With
America Republicans for similar transgressions - even though Mr. Bush's
indifference to the environment is every bit as
worrisome
as Mr. Gingrich's. There are
several reasons for this. One, of course, is
the talk of war with Iraq, which has taken the
wind out of nearly everything. A second is
the miserable failure of the Democrats to take a
stand on the issue, as Bill Clinton alertly
did in 1996. One hears periodic complaints
about Mr. Bush from important members of the
Senate committee on the environment like James
Jeffords and Joseph Lieberman, but there has been
nothing resembling a sustained Democratic
counterattack. Another
reason is the clever way Mr. Bush has pursued
his anti-environmental agenda. Except on the matter
of global warming, when he stood up and openly
repudiated the Kyoto Protocol, the president
has stayed in the shadows - leaving it to his
cabinet officers to chip away, administratively and in the courts, at the
various
rules and regulations that his allies and
political contributors in the oil, gas, mining,
timber and other extractive industries find so
annoying. These
sorties have done real damage. The Interior
Department, for example, continues its relentless
search for oil and gas in places like Utah and
Wyoming without regard to the fragility of the
landscape or the niceties of the law. The same
department has reversed Clinton-era regulations imposing stricter standards on
mining
operations. The Corps of Engineers has weakened
protections for streams and wetlands. Most of
President Clinton's forest protection program is
now at risk - including his plans to protect 60
million roadless acres from commercial
activity, to enlarge protections for old-growth
forests in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska's
Tongass National Forest, and to manage forest
lands in ways that give greater weight to environmental values. Collectively, however, these actions - scattered
across
government, hidden in obscure courtrooms - have not
coalesced into a decisive political issue.
There is no time to make them one before Election
Day. Still, there's a lesson here for Democrats.
Unless they start challenging Mr. Bush's
agenda in a serious, coordinated fashion, his
policies will sail on with minimum resistance. |