Bush vs. Environment
Republican moderates are exasperated by President George W.
Bush's posture on environmental issues. They are not alone. In less
than three months Mr. Bush has begun to remind people of
America'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-1990s 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 from 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. The
administration has signaled a retreat on Mr. Clinton's most
ambitious conservation measure - a Forest Service rule protecting
nearly 60 million acres (24 million hectares) 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 America'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 the job of Congress to hold the line against them.
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