SIERRA CLUB LEADER CARL POPE'S NEW BOOK FINDS BUSH ADMINISTRATION GUILTY OF 'STRATEGIC IGNORANCE' ON THE ENVIRONMENT
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Hard Right Policies Propel Pattern of Special Favors, Secrecy, and Bad Science
April 22 , 2004
sierraclub.org
Washington, DC - It's no secret that the Bush administration has spent the last three years dismantling America's environmental protections. Now the nation will find out why.
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope will release his new book, Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress, on Earth Day in Washington, DC. The book is co-authored by Paul Rauber, senior editor of the award-winning Sierra magazine.
"[President] Bush has done his best, in only three years, to break our national compact on environmental progress and turn the clock back -- not years or decades but a full century," Pope explains in the book.
"This is what the American people do not know: The Bush administration is full of officials who believe -- from the bottom of their hearts, not just their wallets -- that weaker laws on clean air, less funding to clean up toxic waste dumps, and national parks and forests run for private profit are actually good for the country."
In addition to chronicling the Bush administration's record on the environment, Strategic Ignorance uncovers the logic behind that record, revealing a pattern of ideological extremism that is out of step with previous Republican and Democratic administrations, not to mention the American public. The book also explains what happens when the administration's radical agenda contradicts public opinion, sound science, and even the law.
Publishers Weekly recently raved, "The real energy from the book comes from its accumulation of small facts to paint the picture of obsessive secrecy, crony capitalism and the administration's conscious, unabashed commitment to economic exploitation of the air America breathes, the water it drinks and the earth it walks on."
Pope and Rauber peel the layers off the big environmental stories of the last three years, from the Bush administration's misguided efforts to let polluters rewrite clean air laws to its attempt to allow more arsenic in America's drinking water. The book also offers up smaller yet equally disturbing examples of special treatment for a host of polluting industries.
Readers, for example, learn how Karl Rove, the President's chief political advisor, directly involved himself to remove protections for endangered fish on the Klamath River, resulting in the largest fish kill in the river's history. The book also reveals how the Bush administration fired its top mining safety official after he recommended enforcement actions against a coal company responsible for an accident that spilled 250 million gallons of slurry into two Kentucky creeks.
Other highlights of the book include:
* "Ten Commonsense Solutions for the Next Twenty Years," which would restore common sense to the public environmental agenda.
* "Ten Commandments for the Hard Right," simple unwavering principles consistently applied by the Bush administration to roll back social and environmental progress;
* The Bush administration's "Romance with Risk," where caution is thrown to the wind under the guise of cost-benefit analysis;
* "Why not sell the Grand Canyon?" and other stories about how anti-government extremists with the administration have removed protections from an area the size of Texas and Oklahoma as part of a scheme to privatize public lands;
* The "Scientific Method" according to the Bush administration, where scientific findings are "the raw material of spin to be dribbled out, manipulated, or suppressed as suits the political needs of the moment;" and
"The Bush administration's assault on the environment has been breathtaking in its swiftness, scope, and severity," commented U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-CA. "In Strategic Ignorance, Carl Pope and Paul Rauber clearly dissect the administration's agenda and methods. More than a wake-up call, this book is a call to arms for defenders of America's priceless natural heritage."
For additional notes and updates not in the book visit www.strategicignorance.com
**NOTE: Please join Carl Pope and others tonight in Washington, D.C., for a Book Publication Party
5:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Columbus Club (formerly the "fancy soda fountain" in the East Wing)
Union Station
50 Massachusetts Ave., NE
Cocktails and hors d'ouevres
Parking validation available
Honorary Host Committee:
Representative Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, House Minority Leader; Senator Barbara Boxer, D-CA; Senator Maria Cantwell, D-WA; Representative Raul Grijalva, D-AZ; Senator Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ; Senator Harry Reid, D-NV; John Adams, National Resources Defense Council; Dr. Bob Edgar, National Council of Churches; Leo Gerard, United Steel Workers of America; Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; Gene Karpinski, USPIRG; Bill Meadows, The Wilderness Society; Bruce Raynor, UNITE; Rodger Schlickeisen, Defenders of Wildlife; Andrew L. Stern, SEIU.
*Please RSVP for book party to launch.event@sierraclub.org |
