Bush tells Environment: "Bend over"

Post by **Coyote** » 2003-09-09 11:02pm

Well, hell.

Some background: a few months ago President Bush announces that if the House and Senate bring him a bill to renew the assault weapons and magazine ban he'd renew it without question-- thus alienating many gun owners, many of whom supported Bush.

He's already alienated some of the military, by playing head games about Iraq deployments and length of posts in hostile zones, as well as keeping Reserves and Guard mobilized to fill long-term positions while families suffer and civilian jobs or classes wither.

Libertarians, many of whom tend to be conservative or right-wing, are inscenced at the Patriot Act, giving the gov't permision to monitor the activities of civilians at large who have committed no crimes. Right-wing politians from Idaho, some of the most conservative in America, are among the most vocal in their criticism.

In short, he's alienating many of his would-be supporters, with the exception of the religious right-- there he espouses support for religious school vouchers and has talked openly about giving government money to faith-based programs. Great.

So now the Environment. Quietly, in the last couple of weeks, Bush has undone some EPA regulations and fulfilled a corporate Wish List; the story was reported in the Sunday Idaho Statesman but unfortunately I cannot find it in the archives. I will try to copy what I can from Lilith's copy, which she still has.

But the gist of it-- carbon dioxide, as emmitted from coal plants, is no longer classified a pollutant and now, when coal plants expand, they do not have to spend any money on pollution-control measures.

Ballast water from ships is no longer regulated; allowing ships from one part of the world to release ballast water into any American port regardless of what contaminants or organisms may be contained within. The Lake Michigan disaster-- where imported mussels discharged from ballast water have destroyed local fish populations by ruining plankton areas-- could happen anywhere.

A list of other regulatory relaxations were mentioned, but those two stuck in my mind. Has any one else heard of this? It was an AP Wire story.

I'm not exactly a Greenpeace member but... geez.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-09 11:11pm

Is any of this a surprise? We all knew Bush's basic platform since long before he came to power:

1) Religious idiocy
2) Use the government to benefit his rich corporate friends, at the expense of everyone else

While the 9/11 terrorist attacks put a whole new spin on things and created new directives, those two basic pillars of his policy have not changed.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-09 11:16pm

The whole ballast water thing has proven impossible to enforce in reality and would remain so short of actively monitoring every ship. Still I see no reason to take it off the books.

Post by **Coyote** » 2003-09-10 11:46pm

Ah, yes, I found it. Among the ballast water and carbon dioxide rulings, other changes include deregulating the sale of land contaminated by PCBs (so you could buy property along the Love Canal now, goody); speeding up the development of oil and gas exploration in federal parks, and stating that any new environmental regulations must be supported by more stringent scientific peer review.

So any future regulations will be tied up by paperwork and opposing panels of 'experts'. So if a Greenpeace study says that dangerous environmental byproducts are being leaked into the atmosphere by a major corporation, the corporation just hires a panel of hack experts that filibuster the study while the company is allowed to continue polluting since nothing has been definitely proved yet...

According to the article I read (by Seth Borenstein of Knight-Ridder and picked up by the Statesman) the carbon dioxide ruling essentially makes moot the monitoring of cars for emmissions. Yummy.

Loki · Post by **Loki** » 2003-09-11 12:27am

This is probably the only post I'll make remotely defending Bush. It's not that his environmental policy is great (it isn't it's a step backwards), but it isn't as bad as most think.

1) Irrelevant because the past twenty years of environmental legislation will go to hell because of the Clear Skies Initiative, but to be fair, the Clean Air Act (status quo emissions policy) isn't much better.

2) Ballast: There are many alternate causalities for invasive species transported in ballast. Even if we were to stringently enforce ballast water, some organisms would be inevitably swept along. Also, I'm fairly certain that vessels flying flags of conveinience are exempt from many environmental regulations.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-11 12:33am

Ballast water from ships is no longer regulated; allowing ships from one part of the world to release ballast water into any American port regardless of what contaminants or organisms may be contained within. The Lake Michigan disaster-- where imported mussels discharged from ballast water have destroyed local fish populations by ruining plankton areas-- could happen anywhere.

I live on the Great Lakes, the so called disaster is overblown. The Zebra mussels have failed to be the enormous catastrophe everyone predicted. They're a pain in the ass for all concerned and the power plants and water filtration stations have had a bitch dealing with them but they're under control now days. Besides, those were dumped into the Lakes sometime in the mid Eighties, nothing Dubya could have done about that.

The fish habitats have suffered far more from poorly concieved dredging in the last few years than zebra mussels. The necessity of keeping the deep water shipping channels open despite hitting the lowest lake levels in years has done more harm.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-09-11 02:35am

Coyote wrote: According to the article I read (by Seth Borenstein of Knight-Ridder and picked up by the Statesman) the carbon dioxide ruling essentially makes moot the monitoring of cars for emmissions. Yummy.

About fucking time. I hated having those damned tests with our old
1986 Chevy Caprice, we always failed the tests and had to spend hundreds
to fix it to pass test

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-09-11 04:38am

MKSheppard wrote:
Coyote wrote: According to the article I read (by Seth Borenstein of Knight-Ridder and picked up by the Statesman) the carbon dioxide ruling essentially makes moot the monitoring of cars for emmissions. Yummy.
About fucking time. I hated having those damned tests with our old
1986 Chevy Caprice, we always failed the tests and had to spend hundreds
to fix it to pass test

You dont have a cut of date on car emmisions?

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-09-11 05:55am

Stuart Mackey wrote: You dont have a cut of date on car emmisions?

Not in the People's Republic of Maryland

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-09-11 06:44am

MKSheppard wrote:
Stuart Mackey wrote: You dont have a cut of date on car emmisions?
Not in the People's Republic of Maryland

Stupid. Here, if we get serious on such things, there will be a cut of date. Simply because its unrelistic to expect an older car to meet a standard it was never designed to meet. You could try, I suppose, but why bother? there are fewer older cars around and those that stay about are the ones that will end up as enthusiasts vehicles and will get rarer as time goes on.

Keevan_Colton · Post by **Keevan_Colton** » 2003-09-11 09:03am

Stormbringer wrote:
I live on the Great Lakes, the so called disaster is overblown. The Zebra mussels have failed to be the enormous catastrophe everyone predicted. They're a pain in the ass for all concerned and the power plants and water filtration stations have had a bitch dealing with them but they're under control now days. Besides, those were dumped into the Lakes sometime in the mid Eighties, nothing Dubya could have done about that.

Nobody said dubya was responsible for that shit, though you have to wonder why in the fuck he'd want laws passed to make such shit easier to occur.