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News :: Environment |
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Activists: War Lets Bush Aim At Environment |
Current rating: 0 |
by Debbie Gilbert
(No verified email address) |
23 Apr 2003
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Are Congressional votes, which some environmentalists claim show that US Rep. Tim Johnson is "green," just window-dressing meant to distract from what is really going on at the federal level? How do they square Johnson's vote in favor of subsidizing new nuclear power plants with being "environmentally friendly"? |
With the nation's attention still riveted on the war in Iraq, most Americans probably aren't aware that today is Earth Day.
Some area environmentalists say the Bush administration has taken advantage of the public's distraction, pushing through an anti-environmental agenda without anyone noticing.
"Fear is a good tool," said Adele Kushner, president of Alto-based Action for a Clean Environment (http://www.alltel.net/%7Eadelek/home.html). "You get people worried about something else, and then they don't have time to think about who's chopping all their trees down."
Brent Martin, director of Georgia ForestWatch (http://www.gafw.org/)in Ellijay, said the administration is trying to weaken landmark federal statutes, such as the Clean Air and Endangered Species acts, that have been in place for decades.
"We've had major environmental rollbacks in the last 90 days, but they've managed to get all this stuff in under the radar," he said. "Everything has been subsumed by war coverage, and no one is listening."
In March, for example, the administration reversed a ban on snowmobiles in national parks, called for legislation exempting military installations from federal environmental laws, and dropped Clinton-era rules that were set to take effect on cleaning up impaired streams.
And this month, the Department of the Interior announced that 3 million acres of designated wilderness in Utah would lose protected status.
"I think we're looking at an administration that's far worse than the (former Interior Secretary James) Watt years under Reagan," Martin said. "But they're subtle about it. They take a logging plan and call it the Healthy Forests Initiative. They take a plan that allows more air pollution and call it the Clear Skies Initiative."
Kushner said she's frustrated by these euphemistic slogans.
"'Clear Skies' sounds good, but what it actually meant was that enforcement (of air-quality rules) on coal-fired power plants became voluntary," she said. "With good PR and good speechwriters, you can make it sound pretty. But it's a farce."
Bob Baschnagel, associate director of the Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition (http://www.safc.org/), said the situation has turned out exactly as he feared it would.
"When Bush took office, he placed former industry lobbyists in environmental positions throughout his administration," he said. "He took a lot of heat for his environmental policies at first. But after Sept. 11, that was all forgotten. The public's attention span is not that long, and they have so many other concerns now."
Foremost among these worries is the economy. In a March Gallup poll, 47 percent of Americans said they think the environment is getting worse, compared to 38 percent in 2002. Yet when asked, 'If the environment and economic growth conflict, which should take priority?', respondents were much more likely to choose growth than they were a year ago.
And not everyone is unhappy with Bush's policies. David Jarrard, a sawmill owner in White County, would love to see wilderness areas eliminated in the Chattahoochee National Forest.
"It would be so much better if they got rid of these restrictions," he said. "We can't even go in and get rid of the pine beetle infestation."
Organizations that oppose the administration's policies have little strength to fight back, as nonprofits have been hit hard by the weak economy.
"Funding is tough," Kushner said. "Some foundations have gone belly-up."
Baschnagel said longtime activists tell him they have never seen a more gloomy situation. But they're determined to weather the storm.
"The environmental movement is not going to go away," he said. "At some point, the Bush administration will slip up and the pendulum will start to swing back. This too will pass."
Copyright ©2003 The Times
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com |
Related stories on this site:
300 Sept 11s Is Enough: Act Now To Stop The War At Home
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Bush Pursues Offshore Oil Drilling In Alaska |
by Richard Simon
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Apr 2003
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With the Arctic refuge off-limits, the White House sets its sights on the Beaufort Sea.
WASHINGTON Blocked by stiff congressional opposition to opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, the Bush administration is moving on its own to promote energy exploration in the icy waters off Alaska.
Government officials are inviting oil companies to bid later this year on the rights to drill in the Beaufort Sea off northern Alaska, an area unaffected by a moratorium on new offshore exploration in much of the rest of the country.
High costs have made oil companies leery about drilling in the sea. As an industry lobbyist noted: "A lot of really expensive dry holes have been drilled" in the Beaufort Sea.
In response, the administration proposes to offer millions of dollars' worth of incentives to encourage bids on leases expected to cover nearly 10 million acres, stretching from the Canadian border to the Alaskan city of Barrow.
The Alaskan coast may be one of the best hopes left to President Bush to achieve his goal of developing more domestic energy production.
In response to objections from his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president reduced drilling opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico, and agreed to spend $235 million to cancel unused oil and gas leases elsewhere off Florida's coast and in the Everglades.
More recently, the White House dropped a legal fight with California over old offshore oil leases, virtually ending the chance of new drilling off the state's coast. And last month, the Senate rejected Bush's bid to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska's northeastern corner.
Faced with diminishing choices, the administration is looking elsewhere in Alaska especially in areas such as the Beaufort Sea, where drilling would not require congressional approval.
"If you look around, the Lower 48 is pretty drilled up," said Larry Cooke, a supervisory geologist in Alaska for the federal Minerals Management Service. "If you're looking for big things, Alaska is about the only place left."
Walter Cruickshank, the service's deputy director in Washington, added: "Alaska is one of the few places that the industry is still allowed to explore It can provide significant supplies if the resources that we believe are there turn out to be there and be economical to produce."
The big unknown is how much enthusiasm oil companies will show for the offshore leases when they come up for sale in September.
Federal officials say the offshore area proposed for leasing could yield 460 million barrels of oil. "That's a pretty good-sized field," said Ken Leonard, a senior manager at the American Petroleum Institute.
The United States uses about 7 billion barrels of oil a year.
Unlike drilling in the Arctic refuge, the administration can move forward with the lease sale unless blocked by Congress, something considered unlikely since Alaska's congressional representatives have supported more drilling in their state.
The area proposed for drilling comes within three miles of the Arctic refuge. That's among the reasons environmentalists oppose the drilling plan.
Lisa Speer, a senior policy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the group is concerned that the debate over the Arctic refuge has obscured the administration's efforts to promote the offshore drilling.
"The Arctic refuge is taking the spotlight," she said. "But throughout the Arctic, there is this effort to hand things over to the oil industry. It affects areas critically important to wildlife."
Administration officials say no final decision has been made on the boundaries of the proposed drilling area.
Although the lease sale is proposed for 10 million acres, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton can alter the size before the leases are offered for sale.
No federal leases for offshore drilling in Alaska have been sold since 1998. Just before President Clinton left office in 2001, his Interior secretary, Bruce Babbitt, delayed the sale of leases for drilling off the north coast of Alaska.
In the only commercial site in production in federal waters in Alaska, BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. produces about 60,000 barrels of oil a day from a drill site on a gravel island about six miles offshore and northwest of Prudhoe Bay.
Opponents of the proposed drilling in the Beaufort Sea say they fear an oil spill could harm marine life and wildlife habitats. Such spills, they warn, would be more difficult to clean up because of cold water and broken ice conditions that take place much of the year.
"We hope that maybe Congress will wake up and smell the oil and recognize the risk to the environment might outweigh the gains," said Warner Chabot, vice president of regional operations for the Ocean Conservancy, based in Washington, D.C. "But we also know that the economic and political pressure in favor of [the proposed drilling] in Alaska is overwhelming."
John Goll, Alaska regional director of the Minerals Management Service, said, "We believe things can be done safely."
The agency has advised potential bidders that their operations could be restricted if they threaten whales, polar bears or other wildlife.
Companies face higher costs for oil drilling in the Beaufort Sea in part because frigid weather limits the amount of time they can drill and requires special facilities. They also face additional costs because of precautions they must take to meet environmental concerns.
BP Exploration spent more than $750 million to develop its drilling site, higher than original estimates "primarily due to regulatory and legal delays and the greater-than-anticipated challenges in delivering the first-ever offshore development in the Beaufort Sea with minimal environmental impact," a company spokesman said.
The Beaufort Sea is the location of a notorious "dry well" that was abandoned in 1984 by Sohio after costing more than $1 billion.
"That is our problem up here the high cost of doing anything," said Cooke, the Alaska-based Minerals Management Service official.
As an inducement to oil companies, the administration has proposed allowing them to produce up to 45 million barrels of oil free of royalties paid to the government. Additional incentives would be offered if the price of oil drops below a certain level.
Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com |
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Environmental Groups Target Bush Record |
by Guy Gugliotta and Mike Allen
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
23 Apr 2003
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Advocates Feel President Vulnerable Despite Major Administration Moves
Advocates for everything from clean air to wildlife protection said yesterday the environment remains a major political vulnerability for the Bush administration and a ready tool for Democrats to exploit in next year's presidential election.
In a high-profile effort to shore up its environmental image and record, the administration moved recently to slash emissions from off-road diesel engines by 95 percent, and negotiated a lawsuit settlement in which Dominion Virginia Power Co. agreed to spend $1.2 billion to reduce pollution at eight power plants and pay a $5.3 million federal fine.
In an Earth Day news conference that frequently resembled a political rally yesterday, nearly a dozen environmental advocacy groups acknowledged these accomplishments but nevertheless blistered President Bush for a list of alleged transgressions, including pulling out of a global warming treaty, relaxing air and water pollution standards and plotting regulatory rollbacks with industry allies and big political contributors.
"Today we're counting the number of days until elections," said Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters. "Americans have watched the Bush administration dismantle environmental laws that have improved the health and security of families for decades. And Americans are not happy."
But translating supposed environmental discontent into ballot box success may prove difficult. The annual Gallup/Earth Day Poll found that while the percentage of Americans holding a negative view of the environment's condition jumped from 38 percent in 2002 to 47 percent this year, a declining percentage of voters favor protection of the environment over economic growth -- 47 percent as opposed to 54 percent last year.
Nonetheless, Callahan sees the environment as a key campaign issue next year. "Voters don't believe you have to pick between the economy and the environment," she said. "You can't say that environment isn't a winner, and I think you'll find that out in 2004."
Perhaps, but "we're not running from this issue," said Jim Dyke, communications director of the Republican National Committee.
GOP consultants said the goal is to minimize Democrats' advantage with a few high-visibility initiatives while doing nothing to encourage turnout by voters concerned primarily with the environment, few of whom could be expected to support Bush.
"You're trying to moderate Republican-leaning voters in the suburbs who care about the environment and want to know they're not joining into a party that favors poisoning the water and fogging the air," said Clifford D. May, a veteran GOP consultant and president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a terrorism think tank. "You don't want to leave the impression that environmentalism is the exclusive province of Democrats, any more than they want to leave patriotism to Republicans."
Bush did not attend an Earth Day event but issued a statement saying government "has an important role to play in protecting our environment." He said he was using "new and innovative policies" to protect land, air and water.
The White House, meanwhile, orchestrated Earth Day activities that included administration officials participating in 75 events nationwide. The administration last week opened a Web site, www.EarthDay.gov, that allows visitors to search for environmental volunteer opportunities with 7,000 groups and governments through USA Freedom Corps, Bush's public-service network. Even if Bush chooses not to slug it out with Democrats on the environmental front, he can point to accomplishments that began when he reaffirmed designations of National Monuments made by predecessor Bill Clinton and continued last year when General Electric Co. was ordered to clean up pollutants in the upper Hudson River.
Gene Karpinski, executive director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, termed these efforts "crumbs in an overall menu that's great for big business but bad for public health and the environment." He suggested that the administration used its accomplishments as a smoke screen while it worked to undermine longtime environmental laws. He noted that the administration chose New Year's Eve 2002 -- hardly a peak moment for news-watching -- to sign into law measures relaxing clean-air requirements at industrial plants.
Today, suggested Conservation Voters communications director Scott Stoermer, the war in Iraq serves a similar function. "They recognize that people are paying attention to other things, and they're taking advantage to fly under the radar screen," he said. One such administration initiative, Stoermer said, would exempt military bases from most environmental laws.
David H. Winston, a Republican pollster, said Bush had received a war "bump" in polls of about 10 to 18 percentage points, and acknowledged that the White House was trying to sustain it with new initiatives in domestic areas, including the environment. Many voters will care about the domestic record as well as foreign affairs, he said. "It's not an on/off switch."
Bush aides' discussions about the environment emphasize such phrases as "common-sense solutions," "community involvement" and "a comprehensive approach." These generally signal business-friendly alternatives to steps supported by most environmental advocates.
Such groups label it "Bush-speak," and yesterday they frequently ridiculed a recent memo written by GOP consultant Frank Luntz to show Republicans how to convince voters of their "sincerity and concern" about the environment.
"They're more worried about their image than about doing a better job," said Wilderness Society President Bill Meadows.
But the administration was equally dismissive of "so-called" environmental groups and their "zero-sum approach, where you either do it their way or not at all," one senior official said. "The president believes in finding common ground to achieve results," emphasizing personal stewardship and economic growth.
This may turn out to be a telling distinction as election year approaches. The Gallup Poll showed a modest decline in the percentage of Americans praising Bush's stewardship of the environment -- from 50 percent to 44 percent. But this contrasted with a precipitous drop -- from 63 percent to 44 percent -- of Americans who thought Bush was "keeping America prosperous."
With voters giving Bush sub-par marks on both fronts, political strategists could find themselves choosing between two rival viewpoints: The advocates' claim that environmental safeguards will help bring the economy along; or the belief, as expressed by the senior administration official, that "you need economic growth to protect the environment. The other approach often results in lost jobs."
Staff writer Eric Pianin contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com |
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