As America’s president ignores nature for the sake of business, PAUL E HARDISTY outlines the global impact of his (in)action
IN GEORGE Orwell’s apocalyptic vision of a future controlled by the all-seeing, all-powerful Big Brother, war was peace and slavery was freedom. It seems that for the environment Orwell’s prediction for 1984 was about twenty years too early. In George Bush’s America of 2004 the ‘Clear Skies’ initiative stands for a determined policy to weaken existing legislation preventing air pollution and to reinforce the USA’s dependence on fossil fuels. Bush’s ‘Healthy Forests’ programme camouflages measures that open up vast areas of protected National Forests and Parks to logging, mining and oil exploration. From the day they took office, Bush and his administration have engaged in a systematic dismantling of America’s environmental laws, carefully built up over the last 40 years; laws that have brought real progress in environmental protection and a measurable increase in the quality of life.
In his recent State of the Union address, Bush did not mention the environment once. Clearly, America’s air, water, soil, seas and wild places are of little interest to his administration. Not surprisingly, Bush shows equal, or greater, disdain for the environment of the rest of the planet. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (held in Johannesburg in 2003) attempted to build international consensus on balancing the needs of development with those of the environment. But this had to be done without the leader of the world’s most powerful nation. President Bush was the only major head of state who refused to attend the summit. But America’s current doctrine of environmental isolationism is at odds with its position as the single largest economy in the world, the largest consumer (by far) of natural resources, the biggest producer of greenhouse gasses, and greatest producer of waste. America’s impact on the world’s environment is greater than that of almost all other nations combined, simply by virtue of its economic and military pre-eminence. And yet, the US has refused time and again over the last three years to sign international treaties and protocols designed to help protect the global environment.
The independent National Resources Defence Council (NRDC) says that “the Bush administration is doing more harm than any other in US history”. Here’s why:
Global climate change
BUSH’S Orwellian description of his air pollution policy typifies his administration’s efforts to curtail real action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. With a central argument that curbing air pollution will result in catastrophe for the American economy, the White House has worked hard to discredit the science behind global climate change. Faced with the sober assessment of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the result of years of research by some of the best scientists in the world — Bush asked the US National Academy of Science (NAS) to come up with their own assessment. Far from finding fatal flaws in the IPCC report, the NAS report suggested that the IPCC might even have underestimated the rise in global temperatures and their impact on the earth’s ecosystems. Despite this, the President’s State of the Environment report for 2003 contained not a single reference to global climate change. Most other nations regard climate change as the single biggest long-term environmental issue they face. For an island like Cyprus, the predicted rises in sea level and change in rainfall patterns produced by such warming are not trivial issues. The Bush administration’s response was to withdraw from the Kyoto agreement (the international treaty to curb the emission of greenhouse gases), ostensibly because developing countries were not required to curb emissions at the same rate as developed ones. Bush then promptly slashed funding for existing programmes designed to help developing countries curb greenhouse gas emissions.
He then pumped $20 billion in subsidies into US oil and coal sectors (already booming with record profits), and eliminated tax credits on low-emission hybrid electric cars. Bush blocked proposals to eliminate loopholes in vehicle fuel-efficiency regulations which allow SUVs to guzzle gasoline at unprecedented levels (average gas mileage in the USA has actually fallen since 1973). Plugging the ‘SUV loophole’ alone would save a million barrels of oil a day, according to the International Herald Tribune. And, in an amazing stretch of logic, Bush has had carbon dioxide (CO2), the main contributor to greenhouse emissions, reclassified by the US Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) as a “non-pollutant”, putting it beyond the agency’s remit to regulate. Now the USEPA can simply throw its hands in the air and say “not our business”, while America’s greenhouse gases continue to irreversibly change the world’s climate. We are breathing the USA’s second-hand smoke, and suffering the consequences, because they can’t kick the habit, or even cut-down.
Meanwhile, public funds for highway construction have increased during Bush’s tenure, while funding for fuel-efficient public transport has dropped. The US government now spends five times as much public money on road building as on alternatives such as high-speed trains and metro systems. And so, more addicted to oil than ever before, determined not to curb energy use or emissions for fear of hurting the economy, America is increasingly and precariously dependent on foreign oil.
Conservation
BUSH’S record on conservation of wildlands and protection of endangered species has been no better. America’s forests, and those of the rest of the world, have been a particular target. In 2003, Bush reversed a campaign promise to devote $100 million annually for global rainforest conservation, under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act. The act, now scrapped, was designed to allow poorer countries to restructure their foreign debt in return for protecting their forests. The administration’s commitment to tropical forest conservation was made plain recently when Greenpeace activists were arrested by the US government while placing a banner on a ship carrying illegally-logged mahogany. Greenpeace was charged, the ship was allowed on its way. Bush has also opened up vast areas of National Forest to logging for the first time — despite a major protest effort that yielded over a million signatures.
America’s nature reserves and parklands are being opened to oil exploration and mining as never before. San Padre Island National Park, the largest pristine barrier island in the world and a jewel of the American park system, is a case in point. This nationally-designated wildlife refuge, which attracts over one million visitors a year, has just been opened up for oil exploration. Oil companies will be allowed to construct roads and drill pads, oil sumps and associated facilities on the island. Bush has also released 8.8 million acres of ecologically sensitive federal lands in Alaska to oil exploration and mining.
Even America’s venerable grizzly bears, reduced to less than two per cent of their original range in the USA, and now restricted almost completely to Alaska, have been designated as insufficiently commercial for a second chance. A plan developed and approved under President Clinton to reintroduce grizzlies into their natural habitat in the lower 50 states has been axed by Bush. It seems that this President would rather have snowmobiles tearing through Yellowstone National Park (he halted a plan to phase out snowmobile access to the Park), than its original inhabitants back.
Law and regulation
THE onslaught on the environment unleashed by Bush has been made possible, in part, by a massive effort to alter existing legislation, weaken statutes, and undermine the government agencies responsible for protecting America’s air, land, water and seas. The White House has, in three short years, made over 100 changes to environmental laws, all of which lessen protection and reduce enforcement. Often this has been done subtly, by redefining or reclassifying protected areas, or, as in the case of CO2, changing the definition of pollutants. In this way, the number of waterways and wetland areas protected under existing legislation has been dramatically reduced. Funding for conservation and other environmental programmes has been slashed across the board. For example, the Everglades Restoration Office, part of the effort to halt the catastrophic destruction of the Florida Everglades, one of the largest and most biologically important wetlands on earth, was simply shut down.
The agencies which are supposed to safeguard America’s environment have been emasculated. The new head of the EPA is the ex governor of Utah, the state with the second worst environmental record in the USA. Unsurprisingly, Texas ranked worst.
Science
IN ITS attempts to stifle criticism and promote its pro-industry bias, the White House has also shown huge contempt for science and scientists. Basis in scientific fact for climate change is glossed over or rejected. In fact, sixty top scientists in the USA, including twenty Nobel Laureates, recently charged that the Bush administration significantly distorts science to support its policy on climate change. The administration’s decision to slash funding for global family planning efforts, for religious and “ethical” reasons, ignores the fundamental scientific connection between over-population and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, the NRDC and the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (whose members are the US government’s own scientists) have catalogued scores of instances where the government has rewritten, suppressed, or ignored the recommendations and findings of its own environmental scientists. Many of these people have become whistle-blowers, and many have been reprimanded or sidelined for their honesty.
THE blatant disregard for the world’s environment shown by Bush and his administration is on record for all to see. What has been presented here is but a small sample of that record. The effects are not only devastating to America, but to the whole world. Weaker standards mean more pollution, dirtier air, poorer health, less biodiversity, more stress on the world’s remaining stock of natural assets, lower living standards, and inevitably heightened conflict, as more people chase fewer resources. The world’s environment is something we all share, and American policies have a huge effect on that environment. Based on President Bush’s environmental record so far, there is no reason to believe that another term in office will bring anything but more of the same. Come November, every environmentalist in the world should become a Democrat, even if only in spirit.
