Protecting the polluters

The Bush administration has turned away from bipartisan efforts to protect the environment, endangering the health of our planet as well as its inhabitants.

St. Pete Times Editorial
Published October 8, 2004

It should come as no surprise that President Bush and John Kerry are miles apart on the environment. Actually, Bush's dismantling of established regulatory policy is so radical that he has distanced himself from a bipartisan effort over the past three decades to protect our natural heritage.

Bush has sought to weaken the very foundation of environmental law - including bedrock acts promoting clean air and clean water that were forged during Republican administrations. He has adopted a newspeak agenda in which smokestack-friendly legislation is called "Clear Skies" and a giveaway of old-growth trees to loggers becomes the "Healthy Forests" initiative.

He has ignored environmental science when it doesn't suit his needs, a practice so troubling that more than 60 of the nation's top scientists signed a protest statement faulting the administration for "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes." Bush has filled key government posts with former officials from the same polluting industries they now regulate. He has, in short, made a shambles of environmental protection.

Given Bush's record, one need not turn to Kerry or Democrats for criticism. Listen to Russell Train, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator under Presidents Nixon and Ford. "It's almost as if the motto of the administration in power today in Washington is not environmental protection, but polluter protection," said Train. "I find this deeply disturbing."

Disturbing indeed, particularly in Florida where a clean environment is vital to maintaining our quality of life. Florida has 12 coal-fired power plants, putting it in the top 10 polluting states, yet the Bush administration wants to let the dirtiest facilities delay or even avoid reduction of emissions that cause lung and heart disease. Not only would that regulatory reversal have a negative impact on air quality, it has already set a precedent that undermines the government's chances of winning existing lawsuits against polluters, the EPA's inspector general reported recently.

Mercury pollution is another growing health concern, both here and across the nation, but you wouldn't know that listening to the administration. Rather than making all power plants meet strict mercury standards, the EPA wants to allow some plants to buy their way out of regulation. That would leave local "hot spots" where mercury washes into inland and coastal waters, and accumulates in fish. The problem is already so widespread that one in 12 women of child-bearing age has an unsafe level of mercury in her body, which could harm fetal development.

Bush says he prefers cooperation to confrontation on the environment, and there is something to the argument that excessive litigation slows progress. But this administration gives away too much while getting little in return. It has eased the way for developers to fill in wetlands and levied fewer fines on those who violate the law. It opposes renewal of a tax on chemical and oil companies to pay for cleanup of toxic Superfund sites, which means taxpayers will pick up the tab.

Kerry would need only a modest environmental plan to look good by comparison, but he has done better than that. Much of what he proposes would reverse the policies of the past four years. He would reinstate the "polluter pays" tax, end the logging of old-growth forests on public land, establish a strict compliance deadline for coal-fired power plants to reduce their harmful emissions, reverse the loss of wetlands and strengthen water quality standards.

Most importantly, Kerry says he would re-establish trust by agreeing to a "conservation covenant" with Americans - a promise to "tread lightly on our public lands and to preserve America's treasures for our children and their children." Kerry would accomplish that by fully funding land conservation programs and evaluating the environmental cost of opening public lands to loggers, miners and drillers. When such land is leased, the government would make sure it is returned in its original state.  (Well that last sentence just paved the way for subjective judgment. How can 100 yr old trees be replaced?) Ja)

"Nowhere is there a greater need for a new vision - a better vision - than in the decisions we make that affect the health of the environment," Kerry said.

In other words, we have lost our way on the environment and need to find our way back to the right path.

This is the second in a series of occasional editorials on some of the important issues in this presidential election.

 

• 19 Dec 03  (News Elsewhere page)  A win for clean water.  The Bush administration announced this week that it will not move forward with a plan to remove millions of acres of wetlands and millions of miles of streams from protection under the Clean Water Act. This is certainly welcome news -- but threats to clean water  loom.  Read other reaction to the administration's decision, and get specific suggestions for what needs to be done to protect clean water. Click here