Bush's environmental grade poor

This Tuesday, the League of Conservation Voters, a non-partisan environmental advocacy group, released a "report card" for President Bush on his environmental record. His predecessors, Republican and Democrat, frequently have received sub-par grades from the LCV, but President Bush's grade sets a new low: F.\nThe report begins simply and bluntly by stating: "George W. Bush is well on his way to compiling the worst environmental record in the history of our nation." As I read through the report, I was shocked by the systematic and detrimental damage that the Bush administration has done to the nation's -- and the world's -- air and water.\nIn the area of clean air, President Bush has proposed the "Clear Skies Initiative." With a name like "Clear Skies," such an initiative should, beg my pardon, clear the skies. According to the LCV, the initiative does no such thing. The League states: "Environmentalists, public health officials and state and local air pollution control agencies charged that the plan would, in fact, repeal and weaken public health protections of the current Clean Air Act, while replacing them with standards that are at best deferred and incomplete."\nThe president has marketed this program as one that would give flexibility to polluters so they can economically update their facilities and, in the long run, decrease pollution. Such a claim masks the reality that polluters will exploit any excuse to pollute. In fact, and in a twist that might surprise many lay observers, some of the biggest supporters of the "Clear Skies" initiative were the polluting industries themselves.\nThe Clear Skies Initiative is only one way the administration is undermining air quality, but, for the purposes of this column, it is time to move on. Our water has not found a friend in President Bush, either. The Environmental Protection Agency itself has admitted that Bush administration rule changes could exempt as many as 20 million acres of wetlands and an estimated 60 percent of the nation's streams from federal protection, according to the LCV. \nThe Bush administration, in what may have been an attempt to counter the impending LCV report, released an EPA report of its own on the nation's environment. The New York Times said the report showed an improvement in our air and water of significant proportions over the last 30 years. This report is encouraging. (Though, I can't help but lack optimism that Bush will sustain the progress we've been making.) What is extremely troubling, however, is that the Bush administration has chosen not to release a portion of the study that concluded "global warming is caused at least partly by human activity, like the rising concentrations of emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes, and that global warming could threaten health and ecosystems," the Times reported,\n Such an omission seems to make clear the Bush administration's ignorance toward the importance of clean air and our environment as a whole. Time after time, President Bush has chosen to side with wealthy, powerful interests (who, coincidentally, are now cutting him large re-election checks) over the environmental health of America. He has ignored the real threat of global warning while his "clear skies" dirties our air. \nThe news from the LCV and the EPA in recent days paints a dark picture for President Bush's ability to be a steward of our environment. If his past policies are not altered, the air and water we rely on to survive could become seriously at risk.