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December 13,2002: Chaos and Disorder in Foreign Policy

The continuing crisis over North Korean nuclear weapons (which the Bush administration refuses somehow to see as a crisis) shows that there is really no rhyme nor reason to what passes for foreign policy in the Bush administration. We're told that war with Iraq is needed to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of dictators and terrorists. When it comes to North Korea, though, whose nuclear weapons program is much better documented and farther along, and which has a track record of shipping weapons to anybody willing to play the price, Bush is curiously timid and retiring, relying on platitudes about diplomacy but not backing them up with any actual visible diplomatic efforts. China ignores US pleas to put pressure on N. Korea and there are no consequences. Pakistan is found to have supplied critical nuclear technology to N. Korea and there are no consequences. (For that matter, Bush seems to have conveniently forgotten that Pakistan itself is an unstable regime with a strong radical islamist sector, and in posession of nuclear weapons). In an especially bizarre twist this week, Spanish navy ships intercepted -- at great risk to themselves-- a clandestine shipment of missiles from North Korea to Yemen. However, after inspection the US authorities decided to let the shipment go on because it had been all properly bought and paid for. How nice. Where is the pay going? To N. Korea's nuclear program, of course. There was no insistence even on veryifying the ultimate destination of the missiles. Spain is furious and making noises of withdrawing its ships from the war on terrorism. Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer says that the US can't just make up international law as it goes along. This statement will seem bizarre to anybody who has read the Bush National Security Strategy, which makes up more radical international law regarding a supposed right of the US to make preemptive strikes against countries it finds threatening. For that matter, why isn't there international law against N. Korea's trade in missiles? The reason is that the Administration has dropped the ball on treaties to restrict such N. Korean exports -- treaties which would have provided a perfectly legal basis on which to act. Some may see the reasons for this lurching in the fact that a conquered Iraq can become a playground for US oil executives, whereas N. Korea has nothing much to offer as a prize. I myself find the situation rather more analogous to the ill-conceived Bush tax cut. Here the general strategy was to pick some simplistic program that can be sold in terms of sound bites, and then just relentlessly stick to selling it no matter how the situation changes. It's a way of looking active and avoiding any hard thinking. In the present case, it's the war on Iraq that's being relentlessly shopped, based on an ever-shifting rationale and to the detriment of much bigger threats.

November 22,2002: Sea turtles lose out to Bush energy plan

In a harbinger of what is to come from Bush's push for more energy production in national park land, the Administration quietly approved drilling of two new natural gas production wells in the Padre Island National Seashore, which is the longest stretch of undisturbed beach in the US. This is a particularly sensitive area, because it is the nesting ground for the endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle. The present push for drilling reverses 15 years of work to decrease disturbance on Padre Island. The new plan will bring more heavy truck traffic at all times of year over the turtles' nesting ground. What's more, it does not impose any restrictions on the traffic, even during sensitive nesting seasons. Padre island is home to numerous other endangered species besides the sea turtle. The wells are to be drilled by BNP Petroleum, which would like to run up to a total of 18 wells on the island.

November 8,2002: Never met a treaty I liked

It's well known that Bush has an unfathomable but profound dislike of international treaties of any sort, but now he has led the US to a new low. His administration is working in the United Nations to weaken or scuttle an enforceable international treaty banning TORTURE. Fortunately, the UN so far has overwhelmingly defeated the US efforts.

November 8,2002: In the background: continued assault on the environment

With the floundering attempts to deal with security issues in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, and the recent heavy marketing of the proposed war in Iraq, there's been a near hiatus in news coverage of environmental actions by the Bush administration. However, lack of news does not mean that nothing is happening, and if you look on the back pages here and there you can still see what's going on. The Bush enterprise has enough soldiers to continue the giveaway of the environment to corporations unabated while at the same time beating the war drums. Here are two examples. One of the most popular environmental actions in the last days of the Clinton administration was an agreement to ban snowmobiles in Yellowstone park. This was supported strongly by the Park administration and by the public. In the public comment period 360,000 emails and letters were received, about 80% in favor of a total ban. Still, Bush listens to snowmobilers, snowmobile manufacturers and the vested local business interests more than the larger community of park users who wish some clean air and peace and quiet in Yellowstone. Bush and his Interior Department (remember Gale Norton?) have been doing the dirty work for the past two years to prevent the ban from going into effect, and their efforts are about to come to a head. The currently proposed revised policy does nothing to limit snowmobile use, except for some cosmetic nods in the direction of favoring slightly newer and slightly less destructive machines. It puts a "cap" on snowmobile use, but the "cap" is so high it's meaningless -- the cap is as 1100 vehicles per day, whereas currently the number of snowmobiles going into the park is 815 daily. Thus, the supposed "cap" actually anticipates a substantial increase in snowmobile usage. Currently, the proposed regulations still contain a requirement that snowmobile users be accompanied by a park service guide to keep them to allowed areas and try to limit destructive practices. However, even this provision is likely to go. Bill Dart, the director of a local snowmobile users group says "They've come around. As I understand it, it will be business as usual..." Meanwhile, for the past several years park rangers have worn respirators because of the air pollution. "This season, many employees will be fitted with sophisticated hearing protection" says a story in the Chicago Tribune. Is this what people come to our national parks for -- to wear hearing protection against deafening noise and gas masks against air pollution? Evidently, Gale Norton and the Bush administration think so. [**Packing scientific advisory committees with industry stooges (see Science editorial, accompanying article on lead)]

July 1, 2002: Bush slashes money for toxic site cleanup.

The Bush Administration announced that funds for cleaning up 33 of the nations most dangerous toxic waste sites, in 18 states, will be cut or eliminated. The cleanup was originally to have been paid for out of the Superfund, but Bush has not backed re-authorization of the chemical industry tax that in the past has funded cleanup. Rather than having polluting industry pay for cleanup, Bush favors charging the cleanup to the general American taxpayer. It remains to be seen whether even this source of funds materializes, as substitute cleanup funds do not appear anywhere in the Administrations budget. The Administration's announcement is consistent with it's general track-record of favoring polluting big-business interests over health and the environment.

June 14, 2002: Bush out to ease coal plant rules

Practically from the day of Bush's election, the energy industry has been lobbying hard for a rollback of "New Source Review," the program that requires old power plants to meet modern standards if they are substantially renovated. It's true that the compliance requirements (i.e. how much renovation triggers the provision) are complicated and cumbersome. There is a simple fix, which is to simply require all power plants and industries to meet the current requirements of the Clean Air Act. When the grandfathering provision was written in, nobody expected companies to nurse along these old plants for over twenty years. Needless to say, the industry prefers instead to be able to operate their old high-pollution plants indefinitely. Today, the Bush administration delivered, when the EPA proposed measures that would in effect eliminate New Source Review and replace it with a number of much weaker constraints on air pollution. It is being done in the name of "flexibility," but the main flexibility being accorded here is to provide the power industry with a greater choice of ways to avoid meeting current emission standards.

May 8, 2002: Weapons, Large and Small

At a time when everybody worries that terrorists might get access to nuclear weapons, you'd think that the security of the Russian warhead supply would be a paramount concern of the Bush Administration, and that any opportunity for the Russians to destroy warheads rather than store them in facilities of dubious security would be welcome. Far from it -- the the Russians want to destroy their excess warheads as part of a disarmanent agreement but the US negotiators insist that the US will store rather than destroy decommissioned warheads, which will likely force the Russians to do the same. On the smaller end of the disarmament scale, Attorney General John Ashcroft submitted a brief to the Supreme Court asking the court to declare that the Second Amendment confers an absolute right of individuals (rather than militias) to own guns. This reverses sixty years of government policy, going back to the 1937 US v Miller case, which declared that the Second Amendment did not refer to individual ownership. The National Rifle Association is ecstatic, and called Ashcroft's action "a breath of fresh air to freedom-loving gun owners." Ashcroft was featured on the cover of the National Rifle Association magazine last summer. During the presidential election, the NRA boasted that if Bush were elected they'd be "working out of the oval office" rather than knocking on the door. Now we see how right they were. [**Bush's announcement that global warming is real but that we should just get used to it.Misunderstanding about CO2 already there vs. CO2 coming in future. Related issue: EPAinstructed to remove global warming assessment from state of environment report.] [**Bush defense dept. classification of missile defense test data. With history ofcover-ups and faked tests, can defense contractors be trusted any more thanWorldCom and Enron?]

May 3, 2002: Mountain Top Removal Coal Mining

The Bush administration finalized changes to the Clean Water act that wouldallow coal miners to dump mine debris in waterways. The rule changein essence reclassifies mine waste as "fill" rather than a pollutant, andis seen by the coal mining industry as a necessary concession to permit themto continue the practice of "mountain top removal" mining, in which wholemountains are defaced in order to get at coal seams. Fortunately, the rulechange was blocked by a West Virginia court. However, it's unlikely thatthe Bush Administration will give up. Watch for continued attempts togive the coal mining industry license to destroy the environment.[**Add link to picture of what mountain looks like after its top removed.Other links:http://www.cleanenergy.org/energy/coal/mtr.html]

April 12,2002

It was reported today that the enabling legislation presented by the Administration for an environmental treaty banning use of certain dangerous chemicals such as PCB's omitted treaty language designed to allow new threats to be added to the list,after rigorous scientific review. The chemicals presently on the list are in use in the third world, but are no longer legal for use in the US, so without the critical language allowing new pollutants to be added the treaty places effectively no constraints on the US, and incidentally does nothing to ruffle the feathers of Bush friends in the chemical industry. Also today, it came to light that Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior, has been actively promoting the dissemination of a videotape favoring oil drilling in ANWR. It is no secret that the administration has an obsession with drilling in the Refuge, despite its miniscule potential for contributing to US energy security, but the controversy arose because the tape was prepared by Arctic Power, an industry-funded pro-drilling group. Aside from being a blatant example of bias, the promotion of the tape on the Interior web site and through promoting it's showing on television news shows is almost certainly illegal, as law prohibits using government funds to lobby for specific legislation. In a further development relating to this issue, it was reported that Cam Toohey, Norton's advisor for Alaska issues, is former director of Arctic Power. With advice like that, it's no wonder that Interior has such a poor understanding of both the potential impact of drilling and the relative unimportance of the oil reserves there.

April 2, 2002: Big Oil talks, Bush Listens

The fossil fuel industry has long despised the effective work of IPCC Chairman Robert Watson in making the objective scientific case that global warming is a credible and pressing threat. A recently leaked lobbying memo revealed explicitly that the industry has requested that the Bush administration not nominate Watson for a new term as IPCC chair. Dr. Watson has impeccable credentials as an atmospheric scientist, and also outstanding administrative skills honed through his work with the World Bank, and he has been an effective promoter of sound science. Today, it became clear that the administration is indeed letting the fossil fuel industry control its climate policy. Rather than re-nominating Watson as chair, the US is putting forth Rajendra K. Pachauri of India as its favored candidate. Pachauri has no particular credentials in atmospheric science, and comes from an engineering and economics background. We can only hope that Dr. Pachauri turns out not to be the patsy that the Bush administration hopes for. This is only the most recent of the Bush attempts to undermine the IPCC process and its influence on global warming policy. Shortly after becoming President, Bush expressed skepticism that a UN study such as IPCC could present an objective view of the issue. At his request, the National Academy of Sciences convened an All American panel of distinguished scientists to review the IPCC report, being give only two months to review work that the IPCC took 5 years to complete. Much to the shock of the Bush administration the NAS panel confirmed and even strengthened the sense of urgency in the IPCC report. Now that Bush has failed to discredit IPCC on scientific grounds, he seems to be trying another tack: weakening the credentials of the leadership so as to make the next report less authoritative. So much for Bush's claim that global warming policy must be informed by sound science.

March 2, 2002

Who wrote the Bush energy plan, and why does it contain so little environmental protection or conservation? In Congressional testimony today, it was revealed that a senior Energy Department official consulted with 64 energy corporations and industry trade groups, but only one environmental group. (see "Energy Firms were heard on Air Rules," NYT March 2, 2002). Subsequent release of Energy Department documents under the Freedom of Information Act has since revealed the extent of the bias in favor of the fossil fuel industry in Energy Department deliberations. For example, in those rare cases when the opinion of environmental groups was solicited,they were given only 48 hours notice to prepare their recommendations.

March 1, 2002

The chief of enforcement of the Environmental Protection Agency resigned in protest today, saying that he was tired of fighting "a White House that seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to enforce." Bush has cut 200 positions from the EPA enforcement staff. He has also undermined legal efforts to reduce air pollution from nine major power companies who together are responsible for one-fourth of the nation's sulfur-dioxide emissions. A chief concern cited in Mr. Schaeffer's resignation is the pressure from the Bush Administration to weaken enforcement of New Source Review under the Clean Air Act. This provision seeks to prevent grandfathered power plants and refineries from illegal evasion of compliance with current emission restrictions. Schaeffer joined the Environmental Protection Agency 12 years ago, during the first Bush administration, and has won bipartisan acclaim for the quality of his legal work.

Feb. 20, 2002

The Bush administration continues its efforts to roll back Clinton's ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Bush Administration Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, was quoted as saying "Snowmobiles belong in Yellowstone" (Chicago Tribune). One of the "compromise" plans being considered would allow over 1000 snowmobiles per day to enter, including 500 at the West entrance. That's only a measly reduction from the 590 that currently enter.

Feb.17, 2002

Today Bush announced his version of a "clean air" plan. With regard to conventional power-plant pollutants like mercury, nitrogen oxides,and sulfur compounds, the plan represents a weakening of the clean-up that would ordinarily be imposed by the Clean Air Act [**Add in details] As expected, Bush broke his campaign pledge to include carbon dioxide as a controlled pollutant. Instead, as his answer to the Kyoto protocol he rejected, he proposed carbon-accounting legerdermain that would set CO2 targets tied to economic growth. These targets would allow CO2 to grow dramatically in coming years. Even these very unrestrictive targets would not be mandated. Bush proposes only a series of strictly voluntary measures to help curb carbon emissions. During his visit to Japan, a reporter asked the Japanese Prime Minister whether the environment would be better if the US had signed the Kyoto Protocol. Rudely, Bush interrupted the reporter and didn't even give the Premier the chance to answer, saying "That's moot!"