Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
Header
Thursday, Aug. 12, 2004Dubya vs. Our Environment, Round 313
Navigation
the archives
The last few dribbles...
- -
Wednesday, Jul. 06, 2005
good-bye diaryland -
Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005
Social Security -
Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005
save the arctic refuge -
Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005
it's surreal -
Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2005
the latest entry
Contact the ikss
~ the ikss guestbook ~
email the ikss
notes to the ikss
New here? Start here
The Usual Suspects (Cast)
the ikss Mission Statement: Please Read
the ikss bio
the ikss profile, including favorite diaryland links
somebody out there loves me
�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
~~~
John Kerry unveiled a couple of key environmental plans as he whistle-stopped across the country. Last week it was his pro-environment, pro-jobs energy strategy. Kerry's plan offers what BusinessWeek calls "solid ideas" for a path to energy independence. Instead of the old drill-and-spill blueprint of the Bush Administration, Kerry's plan pushes for incentives for the auto industry to increase fuel efficiency, for alternative fuels, and for increased energy efficiency of government buildings.
And this week, Kerry touted his National Parks revitalization plan. In 2000, then-candidate Bush promised to provide adequate funding for the system's maintenance backlog. What the Parks System got in return was a lot of rhetoric and photo ops of the President looking mighty outdoorsy -- not to mention staffing shortages and memos to parks officials to spin budget shortfalls as "service level adjustments". Meanwhile, the system is millions in the hole when it comes just to maintaining our national treasures. Kerry pledges to expand the parks system budget by $600 million over 5 years -- a much needed expansion.
Read more about Kerry's energy plan
Read more about Kerry's parks plan
~~~
From BushGreenwatch:
Administration to Sacrifice Western Wilderness to Oil and Gas
In a familiar refrain favoring development over conservation, the Bush Administration is ramping up to sacrifice some of America's finest Western wilderness to oil and gas development.
On July 15 the Bureau of Land Management proposed leasing the South Shale Ridge near DeBeque, Colorado, for oil and gas drilling. South Shale Ridge, a proposed wilderness area, provides critical habitat for Colorado wildlife, including more than a dozen endangered, threatened, or sensitive species.
According to the Colorado Environmental Coalition, South Shale Ridge contains "miles of washes, arroyos, and canyons that hide a seemingly endless array of hoodoos, geologic curiosities, and ancient stands of junipers and pinion pines." [1] BLM's decision was made without meaningful public involvement, despite years of commitments that public input would be considered before leasing.
Also slated by BLM for oil and gas development is the pristine Jack Morrow Hills area of southwest Wyoming. Under BLM's proposal, this 622,000-acre area, which contains seven wilderness study areas, the largest migratory game herd in the lower 48 states (50,000 pronghorn antelope) [2], Mormon pioneer trails, and numerous American Indian holy sites [3], would be laced with 205 oil and gas wells and 50 exploratory coalbed methane wells. And, under some studies cited by BLM, up to 1,077 natural gas wells, and 543 coalbed methane wells may be drilled in the area.
But even if all of the technically recoverable oil and gas in the Jack Morrow Hills were extracted, it would only provide the U.S. with 9 weeks of natural gas and 39 minutes of oil. [4]
TAKE ACTION
Public comments on South Shale Ridge must be received by BLM no later than August 12. Send comments through the Colorado Environmental Coalition.
Public comments on the proposal to develop the Jack Morrow Hills area are due by August 16. Send comments to BLM Director Bob Bennett @ [email protected] and Interior Secretary Gale Norton @ [email protected].
SOURCES:
[1] Colorado Environmental Coalition.
[2] The Wilderness Society web site.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Biodiversity Conservation Alliance web site.
*
New Book by Noted Journalist Skewers Bush on Environment
More than 30 years ago, prize-winning journalist Ed Flattau began writing the country's first nationally syndicated column on the environment, and for the past four years he has occupied a ringside seat at George W. Bush's assault against nature.
Now Flattau has written a new book, Peering Through The Bushes (Xlibris Publishing), that dissects the administration's assault on the environment and exposes the many fallacies on which the President bases environmental policy.
Flattau understood the nature of the Administration early on. Quoting from a diary he kept in the first months of the Bush presidency, he wrote in July 2001, "In the six months that Bush has been in office, he has managed to make us one of the most despised nations in the world." Two months earlier, he wrote "One wonders if he is capable of ever conceding he is wrong."
Flattau reviews Bush's deplorable record on the environment as governor of Texas, when that state was 49th in spending to acquire new parklands. In 1999 Houston became the city with the nation's worst air quality, passing Los Angeles. In his entire two terms as governor, Bush never once proposed clean air legislation.
As governor, Mr. Bush allowed oil, gas, and chemical companies to avoid mandatory emission reductions, calling instead for voluntary reductions. Surprise: fewer than 10 percent of those companies heeded his call. Describing the President's practice of favoring industry over the environment at every juncture, Flattau writes that the President talks like a populist but acts like a plutocrat.
Under the banners of "balance" and "sound science," Flattau documents how the President and his cohorts have worked to undo almost every aspect of the nation's environmental progress of the past 40 years.
Wherever possible, the administration cloaks its attack on the environment in soothing words like "healthy forests initiative" and "clear skies initiative," while delivering the opposite. Flattau describes how the administration scorns UN and other international treaties designed to protect the environment, leaving many countries to conclude that the U.S. has virtually become a rogue nation.
Flattau also shows how the President has stacked scientific advisory boards with scientists whose views often lie well outside the mainstream, and how he has chosen top-level advisors who have spent their professional careers working to roll back environmental progress.
A case in point is Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who couches her ultraconservative ideological approach in such low-key ways that she has escaped close public scrutiny.
Even though Secretary Norton is charged with protecting America's public lands, she has led the administration's battle to open the biologically rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- and other irreplaceable sites -- to oil drilling. Flattau recounts how Norton suppressed a U.S, Geological Survey report concluding that oil development in the Refuge would seriously harm wildlife populations.
Peering Through The Bushes ends with Flattau's conclusion that George W. Bush is the worst environmental president in the nation's history, "surpassing the previous titleholder, Ronald Reagan."
Still, Flattau finds hope in a growing grassroots upsurge of opposition to the President's environmental policies-- opposition even from Mr. Bush's core constituencies, such as ranchers and sportsmen in the Rocky Mountain region, who prize their wildlife, clean rivers, and glorious scenery.
Peering Through The Bushes is available online at Amazon and Borders. Single book orders can be obtained from Xlibris Publishing Corp. @ [email protected] or at 1-888-795-4274. Copies will be available in bookstores in September.
~~~
"WASHINGTON - In 1997, as a top executive of a Utah mining company, David Lauriski proposed a measure that could allow some operators to let coal-dust levels rise substantially in mines. The plan went nowhere in the government.
"Last year, it found enthusiastic backing from one government official -- Mr. Lauriski himself. Now head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, he revived the proposal despite objections by union officials and health experts that it could put miners at greater risk of black-lung disease.
"The reintroduction of the coal dust measure came after the federal agency had abandoned a series of Clinton-era safety proposals favored by coal miners while embracing others favored by mine owners."
--Friends in the White House Come to Coal's Aid; Christopher Drew and Richard A. Oppel, Jr.; New York Times; August 9, 2004
This story highlights just one of the corporate lobbyists that President Bush has appointed to a position of power over their former industries. Find out about other foxes guarding the hen house in the Bush Administration -- and what you can do about it.
~~~
The Bush administration yet again put corporate interests before the public this past week, overturning over two decades of sound analysis and recommendations by the Forest Service to push for approval of natural gas development on 40,000 remote acres of New Mexico's Carson National Forest known as the Valle Vidal. The national forest, a vast expanse of wilderness in the southern Rockies that is a haven for wildlife including bears, mountain lions, bobcats, elk, cutthroat trout and hundreds of bird species, borders Philmont Ranch, the largest Boy Scout camp in the country. Each year, 25,000 young people head to Philmont to learn the ways of the wilderness through rigorous outdoor educational programs.
The hypocrisy of Bush administration rhetoric on how to most effectively manage our nation's public lands is only too obvious - arguing for state control when it suits their political goals and against state control when it does not. Just last month, the administration announced a proposal to roll back the widely supported Roadless Rule, opening up thousands of acres of our most pristine national forests to mining and timber development, unless state governors petition the White House to keep select areas protected. This unprecedented devolution of federal control over national forests was spun as an action to increase state control over state resources. However, the administration's recent intervention on behalf of El Paso Energy is a slap in the face to that very argument, given that New Mexico's governor, state officials and public all overwhelmingly oppose the licensing of gas drilling in the Valle Vidal.
Once again, the Bush administration has demonstrated that corporate profits, rather than sound science and the will of the public, are the driving force behind its environmental decision making. Try explainingthat to your relative or friend whose wilderness training trip through the New Mexico backcountry may now be at risk.
Educate yourself and spread the word about Bush's pro-polluter envioronmental agenda! Read E'04's in-depth report on the Bush administration's environmental record.
~~~
Word of the Day for Thursday August 12, 2004
flaneur flah-NUR, noun:
One who strolls about aimlessly; a lounger; a loafer.
last / next
~~~~~~~~~~~peace, love and smooches~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Don't know why you'd wanna, but on the off-chance you may feel tempted to steal any of my words and claim them as your own, please be advised:
All material
Copyright 2002-2005, Howl-at-the-Moon Words
***DISCLAIMER: These are my thoughts and my thoughts alone. If you know me in my "real life" off the net and have come across this page purely by accident, please keep in mind that you were not invited here and I would suggest you leave this page now. However, should you choose not to do so, please be warned that reading my thoughts here is not an invitation to discuss them off-line. You may discover things you do not know about me and may not like very much. Such is life. Again, this is MY space and I will use it as I see fit. If you are offended by anything here, well that's pretty much your own fault at this point.
I say all of this with love, of course, but there it is.
