{"article":{"id":72037,"heading":"The Conservative Assault on our Environment","author":"Natural Resources Defense Council","created":"2003-07-12 18:10:43","modified":"2013-11-11 00:23:54","last_modified":"Mon, 11 Nov 2013 07:23:54","article":"
REWRITING THE RULES, YEAR-END REPORT 2002
The Bush Administration's Assault on the Environment
Natural Resources Defense Council, January 2003
Although our landmark environmental laws are among the most popular and successful legislative efforts of the last 40 years, for the second year in a row they are under siege by the Bush administration. The timing could hardly be worse.
As scientists continue to bolster the case for prompt action to deal with pressing environmental challenges like global warming and deterioration of our oceans, America’s environmental laws face a fundamental threat more sweeping and dangerous than any since the dawn of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Environmental protections have been challenged before, most notably in the James Watt era and in the Newt Gingrich Congress, but never through a campaign as far-reaching and destructive as the threat posed today by the Bush administration and the 108th Congress.
One of the most immediate results of the recent mid-term congressional elections has been an acceleration of the administration’s virulent effort to weaken key environmental safeguards. In the short period since the election, federal agencies have announced seismic policy shifts in areas ranging from air and water pollution, to forest and wildlife protection, to stewardship of America’s public lands.
This report examines the continuing environmental retreats by the Bush administration over the past year, and especially the escalating assault in the few short months since the 2002 congressional elections. It is not a pretty picture. Over the past year environmental programs have been peppered with more than 100 weakening changes, affecting every program that protects our air, water, forests, wetlands, public health, wildlife and pristine wild areas. The following pages examine these actions. Here are a few of the most troubling examples...
FACT-FREE FORESTRY
In a strange and telling development, the administration in August chose Allen Fitzsimmons to head the Interior Department’s wildfire prevention program. Fitzsimmons, who now is responsible for implementing the administration’s Healthy Forests Initiative, doubts the existence of ecosystems and believes the extinction of threatened and endangered species might not be a bad idea.
Fitzsimmons is a free-market policy analyst who formerly consulted for libertarian and conservative think tanks. In his 1999 book, The Illusion of Ecosystem Management, Fitzsimmons wrote that, because ecosystems exist only in the human imagination and cannot be delineated, federal policies should not be used to try to manage or restore them (see http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/webfeatures\/2002\/epa-letter-02-28.html<\/a>). In another paper, he took the position that the nation is not experiencing a biodiversity crisis. In fact, the loss of all of the species currently listed by the government as threatened or endangered, he argued, would be balanced out by an increase in nonindigenous species–many of which are taking over native landscapes with devastating results.
SEE: http:\/\/www.nrdc.org\/legislation\/rollbacks\/rr2002.pdf<\/a>\n","contact":"nrdcinfo@nrdc.org","link":"http:\/\/www.nrdc.org\/bushrecord\/default.asp","address":"40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011","phone":"(212) 727-2700","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Fitzsimmons, a free-market policy analyst and former libertarian and conservative think tank consultant, contends that ecosystems exist only in our imagination -- thus, federal policies should not be used to manage or restore the environment.","numcomment":2,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2003\/07\/72037.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":72059,"heading":"Industry-funded "experts" twist the environmental debate","article":"Rethinking the Think Tanks - How industry-funded "experts" twist the environmental debate.\r\n\r\nBy Curtis Moore\r\n\r\nThe Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) are only 2 of roughly 300 industry-funded groups that are helping businesses and the wealthy convert their vast economic and market power into political might. Their messages are invariably the same: Government regulation\u2013most especially environmental protection\u2013is bad, and any science that justifies it is "junk." Usually these messages are reinforced by money deployed to campaign coffers. \r\n\r\n...CSE\u2019s representatives have appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows and published 235 op-ed articles. What do they tell us? Among other things, that "environmental conservation requires a commonsense approach that limits the scope of government," acid rain is a "so-called threat [that] is largely nonexistent," and global warming is "a verdict in search of evidence." \r\n\r\nThese opinions were echoed on MSNBC, C-SPAN, PBS\u2019s NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, and elsewhere by representatives from the libertarian Cato Institute. Cato "experts" are working hard to pound home a variety of anti-environmental points. They have argued that the global ban on chlorofluoro-carbons\u2013the chemicals that destroy stratospheric ozone\u2013is a case of science being "distorted, even subverted." They\u2019ve suggested that concerns over lead paint, asbestos, radon, and similar in-home poisons amount to "hysteria." And they\u2019ve maintained that federally funded research at Harvard and other universities\u2013used, for example, in the regulation of air pollution\u2013"has frequently been tainted by poor methodology ... and even borderline cases of fraud.\r\n\r\n...While the CSE Foundation works the legal angle, the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) "educates" the judges who will hear cases. Indeed, the two judges, Douglas Ginsburg and Stephen Williams, who held the Clean Air Act unconstitutional (a ruling that was later overturned by the Supreme Court), based their decision largely on the arguments advanced by CSEF. And both judges had enjoyed the all-expenses-paid FREE seminars. (Ginsburg attended them each year from 1993 to \u201998; Williams went in 1993 and 1998.) \r\n\r\nThe Montana seminars feature horseback riding and hiking at FREE\u2019s dude ranch near Big Sky. In each of two years, 1999 and 2000, 6 percent of the federal judiciary took in these junkets. A typical day includes morning presentations, free time in the afternoon, an evening cocktail hour, and then dinner with a speech by, say, Alfred DeCrane Jr., retired head of Texaco, called "The Environment\u2013A CEO\u2019s Perspective."","author":"Curtis Moore","parent_id":72037,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-12 20:53:47","modified":"2013-11-11 00:23:54","fileurl":""},{"id":72067,"heading":"assault?","article":"judi bari and darryl cherney are transporting bombs in cars & ur worried bout "assualt"? come back another day","author":"bomb","parent_id":72037,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2003-07-12 21:51:24","modified":"2003-07-12 21:51:24","fileurl":""}]}