NYTimes.com Article: Fouling Our Own Nest

[Guest guest]

This article from NYTimes.com

has been sent to you by mlmj75@....

Fouling Our Own Nest

July 4, 2002

By BOB HERBERT

Do you remember the character Pig-Pen in the " Peanuts "

cartoons? He was always covered with dirt and grime. He was

cute, but he was a walking sludge heap, filthy and proud of

it. He once told Charlie Brown, " I have affixed to me the

dirt and dust of countless ages. Who am I to disturb

history? "

For me, Pig-Pen's attitude embodies President Bush's

approach to the environment. We've been trashing, soiling,

even destroying the wonders of nature for countless ages.

Why stop now? Who is Mr. Bush to step in and curb this

venerable orgy of pollution, this grand tradition of

fouling our own nest?

Oh, the skies may once have been clear and the waters

sparkling and clean. But you can't have that and progress,

too. Can you?

This week we learned that the Bush administration plans to

cut funding for the cleanup of 33 toxic waste sites in 18

states. As The Times's Katharine Seelye reported, this

means " that work is likely to grind to a halt on some of

the most seriously polluted sites in the country. "

The cuts were ordered because the Superfund toxic waste

cleanup program is running out of money. Rather than

showing the leadership necessary to replenish the fund, the

president plans to reduce its payouts by cleaning up fewer

sites. Pig-Pen would have been proud.

This is not a minor matter. The sites targeted by the

Superfund program are horribly polluted, in many cases with

cancer-causing substances. Millions of Americans live

within a few miles of these sites.

The Superfund decision is the kind of environmental move

we've come to expect from the Bush administration. Mother

Nature has been known to tremble at the sound of the

president's approaching footsteps. He's an environmental

disaster zone.

In February a top enforcement official at the Environmental

Protection Agency, Schaeffer, quit because of Bush

administration policies that he said undermined the

agency's efforts to crack down on industrial polluters. Mr.

Schaeffer said he felt he was " fighting a White House that

seems determined to weaken the rules we are trying to

enforce. "

That, of course, is exactly what this White House is doing.

Within weeks of Mr. Schaeffer's resignation came official

word that the administration was relaxing the air quality

regulations that applied to older coal-fired power plants,

a step backward that delighted the administration's

industrial pals.

During this same period, the president broke his campaign

promise to regulate the industrial emissions of carbon

dioxide, a move that, among other things, would have helped

in the fight to slow the increase in global warming. Mr.

Bush has also turned his back on the Kyoto Protocol, which

would require industrial nations to reduce their emissions

of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The president was even disdainful of his own

administration's report on global warming, which

acknowledged that the U.S. would experience far-reaching

and, in some cases, devastating environmental consequences

as a result of the climate change.

The president's views on global warming seem aligned with

those of the muddle-headed conservative groups in Texas

that have been forcing rewrites in textbooks to fit their

political and spiritual agendas. In one environmental

science textbook, the following was added:

" In the past, the earth has been much warmer than it is

now, and fossils of sea creatures show us that the sea

level was much higher than it is today. So does it really

matter if the world gets warmer? "

Senator ph Lieberman, not exactly a left-winger on the

environment or anything else, gave a speech in California

in February in which he assailed the president's lack of

leadership on global warming and other environmental

issues. He characterized the president's energy policy as

" mired in crude oil " and said Mr. Bush had been " AWOL in

the war against environmental pollution. "

Several states, fed up with Mr. Bush's capitulation to

industry on these matters, have moved on their own to

protect the environment and develop more progressive energy

policies.

Simply stated, the president has behaved irresponsibly

toward the environment and shows no sign of changing his

ways. You could laugh at Pig-Pen. He was just a comic strip

character. But Mr. Bush is no joke. His trashing of the

environment is a deadly serious matter.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/04/opinion/04HERB.html?ex=1026788380 & ei=1 & en=1dc3\

8c22aedf0e6a

HOW TO ADVERTISE

---------------------------------

For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters

or other creative advertising opportunities with The

New York Times on the Web, please contact

onlinesales@... or visit our online media

kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to

help@....

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company