Poor Marks on the Environment
The New York Times
Editorial
January 28, 2002
One of the president's
assistants said recently that
if Mr. Bush chose to model
himself on anyone, it would be
Theodore Roosevelt. As regards environmental policy,
surely an important component of Roosevelt's legacy, we
fail to see the comparison. Roosevelt started the national
wildlife refuge system. Mr. Bush sees the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge as a source of oil. Roosevelt greatly
expanded the national forests. Mr. Bush would shrink
important protections for those forests.
For conservationists, Mr. Bush's first year was a big
disappointment, yielding little more than a few promises.
It's possible that he may yet do good things for the
national parks, despite his fixation on letting snowmobiles
roam as free as the bison in Yellowstone. He has also
promised full funding for the government's main land
acquisition program, and promoted the redevelopment of
contaminated industrial sites known as brownfields. On
most major issues, however - clean air, clean water, the
protection of the public lands from commercial
exploitation - he has retreated or signaled retreat from
the policies of his predecessor.
Unless Mr. Bush himself alters course, the prospects for
improvement are zero. That is because he has filled nearly
all the critical posts where policy is hatched and
regulations written with people who regard the
environment as a resource to be exploited and who have
earned their keep representing logging, mining, oil,
livestock and other interests. The one faint hope in this
dreary landscape is Christie Whitman, the boss of the
Environmental Protection Agency. But apart from a brave
decision directing G.E. to clean up the Hudson River, Mrs.
Whitman has essentially been running in place. A big
victory for her is upholding a rule written in the Clinton
administration.
Meanwhile, the field is littered with broken promises. The
biggest was Mr. Bush's abandonment on March 13 of his
campaign promise to reduce industrial emissions of
carbon dioxide. This decision foreshadowed his withdrawal
two weeks later from the Kyoto Protocol on global
warming, as well as the unveiling in May of his broader
energy strategy, which favors precisely the same fossil
fuels that are believed to cause the warming problem.
There were less dramatic betrayals as well. At his
confirmation hearings, for example, Attorney General
John Ashcroft pledged to defend as the "law of the land" a
landmark Clinton-era rule barring logging and other
forms of commercial development in 58.5 million acres of
roadless national forest. Mr. Ashcroft's lawyers have since
done almost nothing to defend the rule against court
challenges from industry, a failure that has encouraged
the timber lobbyists who now run the Forest Service to
proceed with their parallel campaign to destroy the
roadless policy by administrative means. Mr. Ashcroft's
negative handiwork is everywhere. Three days after Mrs.
Whitman upheld a Clinton rule protecting wetlands, his
lawyers opened settlement talks with developers seeking
to weaken the rule. That, in turn, can only encourage the
Army Corps of Engineers in its parallel efforts to
undermine other aspects of wetlands law.
Such are the destructive synergies at work in the Bush
administration. The only person who can turn things
around is Mr. Bush, so strong is the mindset of his
retainers. Will he? At the moment, he is riding high, and
issues like the environment do not loom large. Yet ever
since the landmark conservation laws enacted three
decades ago under another Republican, Richard Nixon,
Americans have demonstrated a commitment to
environmental values that transcends party. In times of
conflict or economic crisis, this commitment recedes. But
it always comes back, and politicians who ignore it pay
dearly.
nytimes.com |
