Bush - Hardly Captain Planet

Hey, you might be inhaling more of such things as lead, carbon monoxide, sulfur, nitrogen oxides, oxides, particulates and ozones soon, if not already. Lungs burning yet? Well, you can thank the man in the Oval Office.\nThe Bush administration recently lessened clean air regulations -- a move which will now allow factories, manufacturers and utilities to avoid the obligation of installing new pollution-control technologies when they modernize their establishments. To defend this move, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman said the old program "deterred companies from implementing projects that would increase energy efficiency and decrease air pollution" (www.cnn.com).\n This move will most likely touch Indiana directly, especially after seeing reports of cities like Indianapolis having the worst air quality since 1988. By September 2002,\n Indianapolis-area ozone levels that exceeded federal standards more than doubled as compared to the entire previous year, according to The Indianapolis Star. \nThe state has a $7.2 million program known as the Clean Air Car Check. This program monitors air quality and requires auto emissions tests in only four of Indiana's 92 counties (Lake, Porter, Floyd and Clark counties) because emissions levels are so high as a result of polluting industries, according to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. \nThey can't even monitor how much these car checks improve air quality because it's unknown whether the polluting source is ambient. And now the government wants to keep industries that are creating the majority of the problem from having to further control their emissions? Instead of spending $7.2 million on a project we can't monitor, how about gearing that money toward something you know will work -- like on an industry pollutant regulation?\nBut Bush's attack of the environment doesn't stop there.\nA week ago today, Bush introduced a proposal to streamline a Clinton-era environmental plan that previously put the life of the nation's 155 national forests and 20 grasslands before economic concerns -- but it looks like costs are now more important than conservation.\nAccording to cnn.com, "the new proposal would allow local federal forestry officials to develop management plans for the land they supervise without having to first conduct an in-depth environmental impact study."\nThe document states, "With this proposal, the agency seeks to produce a planning rule that sets the stage for planning to be done in a reasonable manner, at reasonable costs, in a reasonable amount of time." Unfortunately, the plan doesn't qualify "reasonable". Bush's proposal successfully erases previous standards and procedures foresters had to go to in order to monitor wildlife populations. The plan claims thinning of forrests is necesary to prevent the spread of wildfires, but in reality, the goal is to allow easier logging of old trees, most coveted by loggers. \n"The trend in planning over the past 20 years has been towards more complexity with the result that limited funds and personnel available to the agency are being disproportionately spent on planning and analysis," the document states. \nIt shouldn't be any easier for regional foresters to cut down trees, nor should the administration be more concerned about saving money than saving our wildlife. This is merely another attempt by the Bush administration to play into the hands of the timber industry. The Forest Service is taking comments on the proposed rule via e-mail at planning_rule@fs.fed.us. The proposal is online at www.fs.fed.us/emc/nfma. We urge you to e-mail the Forest Service and tell them our forests are more important to us than helping loggers make easier money.\nMeghan Dwyer and Jackie Corgan for the Editorial Board