Thank you, Christie
REP America didn’t agree with every decision that came out of her agency, but there were plenty of decisions that we did agree with—and plenty of times when we cheered for her. And there was never a doubt that, when it came to protecting America’s environment, EPA Administrator Christine Whitman was the best thing the Bush administration had going for it. Her departure from EPA is a major loss for the country.
So we want to take this opportunity to issue a very public Thank you! to the “greenest” Republican we’re ever likely to see leading an agency in this thoroughly “brown” White House.
Whitman's last stand
Right before she departed from the Bush administration, Whitman released the first-ever “state of the environment” report. While acknowledging that many aspects of America’s environment still need improving, it paints a picture of air and water significantly cleaner than they were in the 1970s.
Green Elephant editors spotted the following comment in a New York Times editorial on the subject. Since we concur with it, we want to share it with our readers:
"But underneath the numbers, and of course unobserved in the report, lies an exquisite irony: what has brought us here are the landmark environmental laws of the early 1970’s—laws that the industries bankrolling the Bush administration have been fighting tooth and nail ever since, laws that the administration itself has tried to amend or weaken."
EPA’s report hadn’t even been released before word leaked that the White House had cut out the section about scientific consensus on global warming, substituting a bit of fluff about needing additional studies, blah blah blah...
Again, the Times was on target:
"In a sense, this may have been the administration’s final insult to Mrs. Whitman, who has been bounced around on other issues during her two-plus years as the agency’s administrator. Now most people are likely to remember her report, which she had intended as an apolitical statistical portrait, for what it leaves out rather than for the useful information it contains."
The Washington Post had a great comment on the subject, too:
"Since President Bush’s election, his administration has been engaged in a strange, Kafkaesque game in which it tries to deny that Earth’s climate is changing, while simultaneously pretending that even if it is changing, it doesn’t matter."
Clearly, global warming is too important to leave to the president, so we at REP were delighted when one of our own highly-qualified members spoke up on this issue. On June 21, Russell Train, a member of REP's Honorary Board, wrote in the New York Times:
"Having served as EPA administrator under both Presidents Nixon and Ford, I can state categorically that there never was such White House intrusion into the business of the EPA during my tenure. The EPA was established as an independent agency in the executive branch, and so it should remain. There appears today to be a steady erosion in its independent status.
"I can appreciate the president’s interest in not having discordant voices within his administration. But the interest of the American people lies in having full disclosure of the facts, particularly when the issue is one with such potentially enormous damage to the long-term health and economic well-being of all of us."
--Russell E. Train, Washington, D.C.
Blair does it. Why won't Bush?
Recently, American newspapers were filled with the inspiring news that a highly-respected world leader had launched a determined fight against global warming. “There will be no genuine security if the planet is ravaged by climate change,” he said.
George W. Bush? Dick Cheney? Of course not! The leader who made that statement was none other than Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush’s rock-solid ally, who has committed Britain to reducing greenhouse gases 60 percent over the next five years.
Listen to your best friend, Mr. Bush!
Another leaker to cheer for
In the last issue, we reported on pollster Frank Luntz’s leaked memo—designed to help GOP legislators with anti-environmental voting records sound more appealingly “green.” Now there’s been another leak that the American people should know about.
On July 1, the Washington Post reported that an EPA analysis of air pollution trends was withheld for months, apparently because it conflicted with President Bush’s wish to substitute his “Clear Skies” initiative for the tried-and-true Clean Air Act.
EPA’s research showed that a bipartisan Senate air quality bill co-sponsored by Senators Judd Gregg (R, NH), Lincoln Chafee (R, RI), and Tom Carper (D, DE) would “provide health benefits substantially superior to those envisioned under Clear Skies.” Problem is, the agency didn’t give senators that information.
According to a report in the July 14 New York Times:
“A dozen staff members met with Jeffrey Holmstead, the assistant administrator for air programs, on March 24 to explain the options they planned to assess. Employees at the meeting [said that] Mr. Holmstead said he had to consult the White House before they proceeded. Four days later, a meeting at which the staff members were to present results of their modeling to outside advisers was canceled. It has not been rescheduled...
“At a meeting on May 2, employees who attended it said, Mr. Holmstead of the E.P.A. wondered out loud, ‘How can we justify Clear Skies if this gets out?”
The leaked memo showed that EPA was convinced that the Senate bill not only “would cut power plant emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury earlier and by larger amounts than would the president’s bill,” according to the Post, but that by 2020 it “would result in 17,800 fewer premature deaths from power plant air pollution than would Clear Skies. That would save $140 billion a year in health benefits—about $50 billion more than Clear Skies.”
Fifty billions of dollars per year and long-term human health benefits of that magnitude don’t sound like things a “compassionate conservative” administration should ignore, not even to advance the president’s pet project.
Bully for Lamar!
Right before this issue went to press, Senator Lamar Alexander (R, TN) joined Senators Gregg, Chafee and Carper as a co-sponsor of the bill mentioned above. Right on, Senator!
Good clean bills
Speaking of pollution-control bills... there are four good ones up for consideration in Congress this summer. REP America would be delighted to see any of them pass.
The Gregg-Chafee-Carper (and now Alexander) “four pollutant” legislation described above is S 843, the Clean Air Planning Act of 2003.
Senators Susan Collins (R, ME), Olympia Snowe (R, ME) and Jim Jeffords (I, VT) are backing S. 366, the Clean Power Act of 2003.
In the House, Sherwood Boehlert (NY), Wayne Gilchrest (MD), Nancy Johnson (CT), Sue Kelly (NY), Frank LoBiondo (NJ), Jim Saxton (NJ) and Chris Shays (CT) are pushing their own “four pollutant” bill, HR 2042, the Clean Smokestacks Act of 2003.
Another good House bill is HR 962, the Clean Water Authority Restoration Act of 2003. GOP co-sponsors are Michael Castle (DE), Chris Shays (CT), Vern Ehlers (MI), Jim Leach (IA) and Sherwood Boehlert (NY).
A bad report card, again
Yet another top-tier environmental group has released an issue-specific Report Card on the Bush administration, and the news isn’t good for Americans who care about protecting our natural heritage.
In June, the National Parks Conservation Association issued a well-researched report, The Bush Administration and America’s National Park System: A Two-Year Analysis and Rating. NPCA grades individual elements of the administration’s track record as follows:
Resource Preservation: F
Visitor Experience: F
Funding: C+
Administration/Management: D
Growth of the System: F
Overall grade: D-
This score came credibly close to REP America’s own D rating of the administration’s handling of public lands. (Our Midterm Report Card from the Winter 2003 Green Elephant is still available in the Newsletter section of our web site.)
Read NPCA’s Report Card on the web.
Not-so-sweet surrender
Despite the fact that that the Bush administration has consistently given in to timber companies who want taxpayers to pay for additional logging roads in roadless areas of our national forests—and refused to fight them in court—it looked for a brief while as if they were going to let the roadless rule stand.
In June, when Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey announced with great fanfare that the administration intended to let the roadless rule stand, they got superb press. “Bush to prohibit building roads inside forests” read the New York Times headline. “We are going to leave the Clinton rule in place. That is the law of the land,” the Washington Times quoted Rey as saying.
The fine print came a week later when Rey proposed two roadless rule amendments, one exempting Alaska forests from the road-building ban, the other allowing governors in other states to request exemptions.
The AP reported on June 9:
“Rey said the administration had settled a lawsuit filed by Alaska to challenge the road-building ban. As part of the settlement, the administration has agreed to exempt the Tongass and Chugach national forests from the revised roadless rule.”
This reflects a familiar and disturbing pattern of the Bush administration when it comes to natural resources. As essayist Eric Brazil wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about Interior Secretary Gale Norton:
“Her department avoids frontal assaults on environmental policies it dislikes. Instead, it throttles them with sweetheart legal settlements that give the oil, timber and mining industries...everything they want.
“Exhibit A is Norton’s recent decision to withdraw her department’s protection of potential wilderness areas as part of a settlement of an old, failed Utah lawsuit.”
The administration’s “sue-and-settle” strategy is a too-clever way to give public lands away to special interests and to evade Americans’ clear preference for strong conservation policies.
Bad-faith promises
In 1964, Congress established the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), a visionary investment in protecting America’s natural heritage by providing funds for land acquisition by federal agencies and grants for state and local projects.
Using revenues from offshore oil and gas leases, LWCF has purchased 7 million acres of open space across the country, paying for everything from expanding national parks to adding neighborhood playgrounds. Funding was supposed to be fixed at $900 million per year.
When Congress’ diversion of offshore revenues to other uses resulted in dwindling LWCF budgets during the 1990s, a remarkable coalition of conservationists, outdoors organizations, local elected officials and businesses came together to press for restored funding.
In 2000, candidate George W. Bush made restoring full funding one of his few environmental campaign promises. Congress also promised that year to restore full funding for LWCF and related programs supporting wildlife and wetlands protection, private forest stewardship, local parks and historic preservation.
Since 2000, however, funding has again dwindled. The administration requested only $348 million for LWCF in fiscal year 2004. That’s a 61 percent shortfall. Worse, in July Congress cut the administration’s request even further. The House Appropriations Committee provided only $198 million, an 81 percent shortfall.
Keeping one’s promises. Wouldn’t that be a novel approach?
Science? Bah humbug!
A $2.5 million National Park Service Environmental Impact Statement on the Bush administration’s proposal to reverse a ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks identifies banning snowmobiles in Yellowstone as the “environmentally preferred alternative” with “negligible to minor” economic impact.
John Sacklin, planning chief for Yellowstone NP, summed up the NPS decision to ignore the EIS in a gem of an honest comment: “We identified the environmentally preferred alternative and the agency preferred alternative, and those are two different things.”
So much for the administration’s increasingly-discredited claim that their decisions on issues like global warming, public lands and wildlife conservation are based on a concern for “sound science.”
Camel's nose under the tent?
As this goes to press, REP is watching a deal-in-the-works with potential precedent-setting ramifications.
For months, the Interior Department has been engaged in secret negotiations to turn the National Bison Range over to a sovereign Indian tribe to manage. DOI has also announced its intention of doing likewise with dozens of other federal lands—Redwoods NP, Joshua Tree NP, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and so on.
Ordinarily, this might seem a good thing to do. But coming from an administration loaded with men and women whose dream is to turn all federal lands over to private interests, it’s a worrisome development.
We’re following the situation and will keep you posted.
