The Bush administration, in the last week of August, snuck through nearly EVERY environment polluting measure on industry's wish list.
This article from KRT News Service was in my local paper, The Star Ledger, yesterday, Sunday September 7, 2003.
I would post a link but KRT News Service requires registration to access their links and the only way to register is through their sales department. The Star Ledger didn't have the link on their site probably because it's a KRT story but I'm going to type it out here because I feel it's very important for people to know about this latest Bush administration attack on our environment, done in the last week of August in an attempt to avoid any scrutiny.
I find these actions inconscienable. They are a further attack on our environment along with actions like the attmept to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Bush administration's assertion they want the logging industry to cut down forests to prevent forest fires! These are only two examples of the myriad attempts to destroy our environment by the Bush administration. We can now add to the Bush attack on our environment, designed solely to fill the pockets of his corporate cronies, the actions done in the last days of August below. What a disgrace.
"Business likes the Bush environment"
Bush administration defends the easing of pollution regulations.
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
KRT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration eased a series of important environmental regulations in a quiet flurry of late-summer activity, delivering almost every rule change on corporate America's wish list.
In the past few weeks, the administration diluted federal rules governing air pollution from old coal-fired power plants, emissions that cause global warming, ballast water on ships contaminated with foreigh species of plants and animals, sales of land tainted with PCBs, drilling for oil and gas on federal land and scientific studies that underpin federal regulations.
In every case the business community got what it wanted, and environmentalists got mad.
Administration supporters say the rule changes are in part attempts to eliminate unnecessary government edicts that curtail energy production, discourage investment, hinder the economy or cost jobs. Moreover, they say, not all rule changes have favored industry, although they acknowledge that most have.
Frank Maisano, an energy lobbyist at the Bracewell & Patterson law firm in Washington, pointed to new rules restricting diesel engines, issued last April. Those strong rules, praised by environmentalists, were enacted over the objections of the diesel-engine industry, Maisano said.
Nevertheless, Bill Kovacs, the vice president for environmental issues of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the business community won more environmental battles during the final week of August than it had during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration.
"We certainly had a number of victories this week; I don't think anyone can deny that," Kovacs said on the Friday before Labor Day.
He and two big-industry lobbyists said the Bush administration had delivered nearly every environmental regulatory change business put on its to-do list in January 2001. Their industries got every change they wanted, the lobbyists said.
"This administration is dismantling anything that's impairing industry or the private sector's ability to develp, use land or produce energy," said Carl Reidel, professor emeritus of environmental policy and law at the University of Vermont.
Experts say the timing of the changes wasn't accidental.
"They need to get this stuff out of the way before they get into an election year; they need to get enough below the radar," said political science professor Stephen Meyer, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project on Environmental Politics and Policy.
"The Bush administration always likes to announce unpopular environmental policies in the dead of political and press night. And you can't find a week when people are less likely to pay attention than the end of August," said Phil Clapp, the president of National Environmental Trust.
Lisa Harrison, the Environmental Protection Agency's chief spokeswoman, denied that the timing was politically motivated.
The decisions included:
This article from KRT News Service was in my local paper, The Star Ledger, yesterday, Sunday September 7, 2003.
I would post a link but KRT News Service requires registration to access their links and the only way to register is through their sales department. The Star Ledger didn't have the link on their site probably because it's a KRT story but I'm going to type it out here because I feel it's very important for people to know about this latest Bush administration attack on our environment, done in the last week of August in an attempt to avoid any scrutiny.
I find these actions inconscienable. They are a further attack on our environment along with actions like the attmept to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Bush administration's assertion they want the logging industry to cut down forests to prevent forest fires! These are only two examples of the myriad attempts to destroy our environment by the Bush administration. We can now add to the Bush attack on our environment, designed solely to fill the pockets of his corporate cronies, the actions done in the last days of August below. What a disgrace.
"Business likes the Bush environment"
Bush administration defends the easing of pollution regulations.
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
KRT NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration eased a series of important environmental regulations in a quiet flurry of late-summer activity, delivering almost every rule change on corporate America's wish list.
In the past few weeks, the administration diluted federal rules governing air pollution from old coal-fired power plants, emissions that cause global warming, ballast water on ships contaminated with foreigh species of plants and animals, sales of land tainted with PCBs, drilling for oil and gas on federal land and scientific studies that underpin federal regulations.
In every case the business community got what it wanted, and environmentalists got mad.
Administration supporters say the rule changes are in part attempts to eliminate unnecessary government edicts that curtail energy production, discourage investment, hinder the economy or cost jobs. Moreover, they say, not all rule changes have favored industry, although they acknowledge that most have.
Frank Maisano, an energy lobbyist at the Bracewell & Patterson law firm in Washington, pointed to new rules restricting diesel engines, issued last April. Those strong rules, praised by environmentalists, were enacted over the objections of the diesel-engine industry, Maisano said.
Nevertheless, Bill Kovacs, the vice president for environmental issues of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the business community won more environmental battles during the final week of August than it had during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration.
"We certainly had a number of victories this week; I don't think anyone can deny that," Kovacs said on the Friday before Labor Day.
He and two big-industry lobbyists said the Bush administration had delivered nearly every environmental regulatory change business put on its to-do list in January 2001. Their industries got every change they wanted, the lobbyists said.
"This administration is dismantling anything that's impairing industry or the private sector's ability to develp, use land or produce energy," said Carl Reidel, professor emeritus of environmental policy and law at the University of Vermont.
Experts say the timing of the changes wasn't accidental.
"They need to get this stuff out of the way before they get into an election year; they need to get enough below the radar," said political science professor Stephen Meyer, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Project on Environmental Politics and Policy.
"The Bush administration always likes to announce unpopular environmental policies in the dead of political and press night. And you can't find a week when people are less likely to pay attention than the end of August," said Phil Clapp, the president of National Environmental Trust.
Lisa Harrison, the Environmental Protection Agency's chief spokeswoman, denied that the timing was politically motivated.
The decisions included:
- Two controversial changes in a rule governing expansion of old coal-fired power plants, dramatically easing the rules requiring companies to install new pollution controls when they make big upgrades.
Two legal opinions ruling that carbon dioxide, which most scientists say is the chief cause of global warming, isn't a pollutant that the EPA can cite to regulate emissions from cars and power plants. The rulings reverse a Clinton administration legal opinion that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
An EPA legal opinion declaring that it won't regualte ships' ballast water under the Clean Water Act, turning the issue over to the Coast Guard. The ballast water contains billions of tiny fish, plants and other foreign invasive species that scientists say are major threats to native species in American waters.
Facebook
Twitter