Bush’s Self-Defeating Environmental Policy
10th March 2007
by gordo
Citing the potential for irreversible environmental damage to Glacier National Park, the Bush administration formally objected to Canadian plans to build a gigantic open-pit coal mine near the Montana border:
"We believe that significant adverse environmental effects may occur in the United States should the Cline Mining Company project move forward as proposed," said the letter from Edward Alex Lee, director of the office of Canadian affairs at the State Department.
But up until now, the Bush administration has done just about everything in its power to see that the mine will be built, and it may now be too late to stop it.
First of all, there's the timing of the objection. Montana state officials have been asking Bush to take action since 2001, when the Cline Mining Company first asked for permission to lop the top off of a mountain in order to extract 40 million tons of coal. Obviously, the time to begin formal objections was then, not after Cline and the provincial government of British Columbia had already invested a tremendous amount of time and resources in the project.
Also, the Bush administration helped create the market for the coal. Several electric companies are building new coal plants to meet the nation's rising electricity demands:
The new $1.1 billion MidAmerican facility in Iowa will be one of the nation's biggest, with 790 megawatts of capacity. Its boilers and pulverizers will devour 400 tons of coal every hour, 3.5 million tons a year, Sokol says. Combined with an existing plant next door, it will require a fresh train of coal every 16 to 17 hours; each train will be nearly 1.5 miles long and lug 135 cars about 650 miles from Wyoming's Powder River Basin. "We're making investment decisions today that will make it impossible in 2020 to get the next increment of [greenhouse gas] reduction," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club lawyer who is fighting plant construction in the Midwest.
And why do we need gigantic new coal plants? Partly, it's because the Bush administration refuses to impose common sense regulations, like requiring the use of energy-efficient light bulbs. And partly, it's because the Bush administration has consistently failed to provide adequate funding for research into conservation and alternative energy technologies (link link link link).
And let's not forget the fact that the primary threat to the ecosystem of Glacier Park is not a proposed mine in Canada, but the global warming that is melting the park's glaciers and fostering a large increase in the number of snow fleas. The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming, attempted to silence a climate scientist at NASA, and barred federal scientists from traveling abroad to discuss the subject.
Let's be serious: there's no way that Bush could screw up this many aspects of his environmental policy. His efforts to protect the environment appear to be self defeating, but only if you take him at his word and believe that he is trying to be a good steward of the nation's environment and resources.
The reason that he's not effectively protecting our parks is that he absolutely does not care about these national treasures, or about the America that future generations will inherit.
(cross posted at Liberal Avenger)
March 10th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
Here is an url that you can send to friends and family that will direct them to the video “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.
http://gorelied.notlong.com
For more information on the documentary you can go here.
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html
March 11th, 2007 at 5:46 am
Sean–
It never fails. Whenever I post anything that mentions 9/11, someone directs me to an amateur video that purports to prove that Bush was behind the attacks. And whenever I post about global warming, someone directs me to an amateur video that purports to prove that global warming is a giant hoax, perpetrated by virtually the entire scientific community, for nefarious and unnamed reasons.
These videos will inevitably feature so-called experts speaking outside their areas of expertise, bona fide experts making tangential points and presented out of context, and cranks that are taken serious by none of their peers.
Science magazine, America’s premier scientific journal, took a look at what scientists from around the globe are publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and had this to say:
Between 1993 and 2003, the period covered by Science magazine’s survey, not one of the 900+ papers published on the topic of global warming in peer-reviewed scientific journals disagreed with the consensus position that global warming is happening, and that it is a mostly man-made phenomenon.
March 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Bush is responsible for a new coal mine because in the past he hasn’t required phasing out of old lightbulbs (which Europe is apparently just starting do do now), and hasn’t devoted *enough* resources to researching alternative energy (or has, but Congress did not pass it), resources which may or may not result in successful new technologies or slow the inevitable and which would cost jobs?
The links don’t really support your assertions. Critics of Bush are many, but fewer are those who can use the already sizeable investment in environmental policies to actually solve issues like global warming or non-renewable energy.
March 11th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
I–
I said that Bush is PARTLY responsible because he has fought against common-sense regulations that would have encouraged conservation. And he certainly has fought against regulations. Requiring energy-efficient light bulbs, a measure that he continues to fight, is just one example.
I also said that he is PARTLY responsible because he has actively worked to cut back on funding for conservation and alternative energy technologies. That’s what I attempted to show through the links that I provided.
You seem to think that we already spend too much to combat global warming, even as the trend accelerates. What is your alternative? Continue to pollute the planet until it is no longer habitable?
March 12th, 2007 at 6:42 am
The only time Bush tried to defend Glacier was when he knew the coal project was already a lock.
That suggests to me that this is nothing more than calculated grandstanding and whitewash.
March 12th, 2007 at 6:49 am
Stogoe–
What gets me is the fact that many people will deliberately fall for Bush’s transparent deception, and tell themselves that Bush really cares about the environment.