[Shadow_Group] Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

Bush sets out plan to dismantle 30 years of environmental laws

By Geoffrey Lean in Washington

05 December 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=589884

George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling 
Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US environmental 
protection.

In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that 
they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most important 
environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas drilling, and 
reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures - which, 
ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally established by 
the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford - even though Mr 
Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasising his environmental plans 
during his campaign.

"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said 
Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that 
over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement 
over the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with people 
lenient to polluters.

The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open up 
the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the Senate 
defeated plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar bears , 
musk oxen and millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.

But with the election of four Republican senators in favour of the 
drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the 
administration now has the votes forvictory.

It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last 
Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation for 
oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power 
stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas 
Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is 
to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a comprehensive 
review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most successful 
environmental laws.

Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut air 
pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30 years. 
Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House Resources 
Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the Endangered 
Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has been the main 
obstacle to the felling of much of the US's remaining endangered rain 
forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders have also 
announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy Act, which 
requires details of the environmental effects of major developments 
before they proceed.

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last 
week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented itself 
with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one intended to go 
much further. He added: "We will now see an assault on the law which 
will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third World country in 
terms of environmental protection."

The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on 
environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green majority.

They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by the 
former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s - which 
caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green legislation.

*

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