Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
Republicans are pushing the most radical assault on the environment in modern times. But history warns of catastrophe for leaders who trust ideology over science.
Jan 6, 2003 | Jubilant Republicans, focused solely on headlines and human events, may imagine that the most significant harbinger for America's future was the banging of a gavel on Jan. 6, 2003, opening the 108th Congress. Finally, GOP partisans may conclude, they call the shots.
But the Republicans could be wrong. Last September, a significantly more powerful event occurred in the windblown silences of the Arctic. In 2002, the second hottest year on record, scientists saw Arctic Ocean ice coverage shrink by more than at any time since satellite measurements were first made a quarter century ago. And, they say, continued melting could leave the Arctic nearly ice-free by summer 2050. In a related report, University of Colorado researchers found that globally warmed glaciers are melting faster than expected, possibly upping ocean levels by as much as 1.5 feet by 2100, far exceeding earlier U.N. estimates of the 2- to 4-inch contribution made by glacial ice to sea rise.
Americans need to listen intently to those balmy Arctic winds, see the water rising, and then turn a cold, pragmatic eye toward our Washington leadership to decide just how much Republican environmental policies contradict clear messages relayed by the earth. It could be that our leaders are viewing the world through a distorted lens, and that their corporate worldview and sometimes their fundamentalist Christian faith are guiding them to an interpretation of reality based not on scientific fact, but on dogma.
We should take lessons from history, looking to the example of Stalinist Russia to see the human misery that comes from sacrificing scientific objectivity to political ideology. Or look to the Iraqi deserts, not in search of oil, but to observe ancient archeological evidence that proves the dire consequences that result when leaders ignore environmental indicators. Today those global indicators are screaming at us.
World population, topping 6 billion, has already left 1.1 billion people without safe drinking water, says the United Nations Environment Program. The earth is poisoned by 500 million tons of hazardous waste annually. Fisheries are collapsing, croplands eroding, and forests shrinking -- from 5 billion to 2.9 billion hectares in the last century, says Worldwatch Institute. And 20 percent of all species could go extinct by 2030, cautions Pulitzer Prize-winning entomologist Edward O. Wilson.
Despite these apocalyptic warnings, the federal government -- with Republicans in control of the White House, Congress and the judiciary -- has launched the largest rollback of environmental law ever. The Bush administration seems determined to undo much of the good done since Earth Day 1970, when 20 million Americans defended the planet in the biggest mass demonstration in U.S. history.
Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma is poised to become Bush's lieutenant in the assault. As the new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he unseats Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., an environmental champion who advanced legislation to curb global warming. Inhofe, by contrast, is a Big Oil backer who once characterized the Environmental Protection Agency as "the Gestapo bureaucracy" and has earned a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters three years running.
Under Inhofe, hearings to oppose Bush's anti-environmental agenda are improbable, as are subpoenas for administration documents divulging shoddy science or corporate complicity. "Teddy Roosevelt is rolling over in his grave," Alys Campaigne, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in the Bureau of National Affairs Environmental Report.
Bush and Inhofe will likely move to modify or overturn the National Environmental Policy Act Amendments of 1975. This Magna Carta of environmental law requires study, disclosure and public comment on the environmental impacts of federal projects. Bush has already demanded that "excessive red tape" be hacked from the law, fast-tracking road and airport construction and cutting the public out of a once democratic process.
The president is attacking the Clean Air Act of 1970, another cornerstone of environmental law. Late last year, Bush proposed rules to weaken the act's new source review, which requires the installation of state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment in modernizing factories. The new rules allow industrial air pollution to continue at levels that, according to the American Lung Association, now kill 10,000 Americans annually.
Bush's proposed "Clear Skies" initiative also undermines air quality. Like developers who christen subdivisions with the prettified names of the nature they destroy, "Clear Skies" won't enhance the air at all, but will further pollute it, says the NRDC.
Bush's "Healthy Forests" initiative likewise suffers from Orwellian doublespeak, felling Western forests to save them. Disguised as a measure for curbing wildfires, the plan invites logging companies to cut healthy trees in national forests while reducing public oversight. Ironically, the probable cause of recent catastrophic fires is global warming, a problem that most Republicans deny.
California last year passed the nation's first law to control greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles. But the Bush administration has virtually gone to war against the state's environmental initiatives, seeking to extend oil-drilling rights off the California coast and to overturn regulations requiring automakers to sell a zero-emissions vehicle.
This Congress will likely discontinue the requirement that corporate polluters contribute to Superfund, leaving taxpayers to pay for toxic waste cleanup. Both presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. supported Superfund, with Bush Jr. the first Republican president not to back reauthorization.
Under the Republicans, bigger oil-company tax breaks are likely, heightening the nation's vulnerability to terrorism through dependence on foreign energy, while paying lip service to wind and solar power. Republicans will almost surely launch another assault on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other public lands -- reserves that are an insignificant drop in the barrel compared to total U.S. demand.
When the Pentagon used Sept. 11 and the war on terrorism in an effort to get its training exercises exempted from eight environmental laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the GOP-dominated House gave full approval. The lame-duck Democratic Senate rejected all but an exemption to the Migratory Bird Treaty, a "compromise" that allows the military to blast rare migratory birds like the American eagle in the defense of freedom.
This case illustrates Republican arrogance. The Los Angeles Times reported that an administration lawyer, arguing for military readiness, contended that naturalists benefit when the military kills birds because "bird-watchers get more enjoyment spotting a rare bird than they do spotting a common one."
Environmentalists are appealing the military exemption, but another political sea change diminishes their chances of getting a fair hearing. Congressional Republicans blocked many of President Clinton's judicial appointments, leaving over 100 federal judgeships open. With the Senate Judiciary Committee now in GOP hands, the courts could take a hard swing to the right, putting the environment further at risk.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit holds almost exclusive jurisdiction over environmental law, hearing cases concerning federal authority, involving the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency, for example. Senate Republicans blocked two Clinton appointments to the court, setting the stage for a bench packed with Bush conservatives. It is they who will likely hear the Migratory Bird Treaty appeal. Conservative judges appointed now could shape environmental law for decades.
Certainly, the Republican environmental onslaught will face enormous opposition, with new initiatives likely to be tied up in court. For example, just hours after the administration published rules weakening the Clean Air Act's new source review, nine Northeastern states filed a legal challenge to the levels of pollution allowed by Bush's plan. But in the meantime, damage done could be huge. Children crippled by pollution-aggravated asthma are not easily cured; public lands, once drilled, cannot be restored to wilderness.
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