Here I present some thoughts on why the Bush administration may be considered exactly that.

For 39 years, the League of Conservation Voters has graded American political officials, including presidents, on their environmental performance. Just as I was finishing up this review, they announced that they have given George W. Bush a grade of "F" — the first time in their history that a president received a failing grade. I think it is useful, in view of the looming election, to discuss the reasons for that failing grade in more detail. Now that I've been able to print and read the LCV's report, I present some highlights here. But most of the facts in this essay are drawn from Strategic Ignorance. To learn the complete story, of course, you should find and read that excellent book as well as the LCV report.1

As mentioned in my review, there is a neoconservative ideology underpinning all their efforts. But here I'm not going to discuss that ideology; I will only describe actions, policies and statements of administration & congressional officials, and the implications of those actions, policies and statements. Here I will also present my differences with Carl Pope's positions. To make these unmistakable, I will highlight them.

This is not to say ideology is unimportant. It is extremely important, the more so because it often determines who gets nominated for a position. You should read the biographical sketches of John Ashcroft, Tom DeLay, J. Steven Griles, Gale Norton, Mark Rey, and the others Pope presents in Chapter 3 (pages 48-58). This paragraph from Chapter 4 (page 63) is also indicative.

Yes, we certainly don't want to create anxiety about the health risks of pesticides by labeling food products as pesticide-free, thereby letting people reduce their exposure to those health risks. (Sarcasm)

Global Warming

One of the most potent sources of controversy — and therefore most troubling for the Bush administration — has been the issue of global warming. During the 2000 campaign, despite attacking the Kyoto Protocol, Bush unequivocally promised to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants. This lack of equivocation persisted right up until the day before the State of the Union message, when EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman told columnist Robert Novak that Bush "believes in a multi-pollutant strategy, and that includes CO₂." But the right marshalled its might, and that first State of the Union address never mentioned the state of the atmosphere. Whitman, unaware that the rug had been pulled out from under her, assured a G8 meeting in Italy that the U.S. was not backing away from Kyoto. Mere days later, Bush formally rejected it.

Since then, the phrase "global warming" has never crossed Bush's lips.2 The EPA's Climate Action 2002 Report, released in June of that year, concluded that recent changes in climate were most likely due to human activity and forecast an average temperature rise of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit across the U.S. in the 21st century. The White House repudiated this report. In September of that same year, it simply removed the global warming section of the EPA's annual report on air pollution trends, notwithstanding the fact that the six previous reports contained such a section. And in June 2003, major edits to remove many references to global warming studies from an EPA report were made by White House censors. To its credit, the EPA subsequently dropped the entire section rather than be complicit in promulgating the junk science the administration demanded.

Here I have to issue a small "mea culpa". I have in the past questioned Bush's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on the basis that it was rejected by Congress in 1997, during the Clinton years. I was careless in accepting that statement at face value (and cannot remember its source.) A little more research clarified the situation. This rejection did happen, on 25 June 1997. Clinton was president. But it was the Senate that considered it (quite properly, since that is the body empowered by the constitution to ratify international treaties.) According to this page at Wikipedia, the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98) stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". This "sense of the Senate" resolution passed 95-0 on the date given.

President Clinton did not submit the Kyoto Protocol to the Senate for ratification. It's reasonable to assume he did not only because he knew it was pointless. Vice President Gore, disregarding the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, had signed the treaty — a purely symbolic act with no force of law. Of course, Gore is well known as an environmentalist; it could be argued that he was acting as a "loose cannon" in this case. A clearer statement of the Clinton administration's position is found in Stuart Eizenstat's 13 May 1998 testimony before the House International Relations Committee. One key paragraph is:

Mr. Eizenstat is correct. As for the current president, his reasons for rejecting Kyoto are:

• The science is not solid enough.
• Developing nations are not required to comply.
• The U.S. would suffer significant economic harm if it attempted to meet Kyoto's requirements.

This third reason is based on a study by the Energy Information Administration. Like most economic projections, it rests on assumptions which may fairly be challenged. In particular, note that the cost increases it projects vary from roughly 18 to 80 percent. That's quite a wide range of impacts. Note too that these rising costs will drive improvements in energy efficiency and shifts to fuels with lower carbon content (i.e. fewer coal-fueled power plants). These things are already happening. Finally, as the report acknowledges, technical advances may change the picture entirely. This too is already happening, with fuel cells and hybrid cars. So there is ample reason to doubt the administration's warning of serious economic harm from Kyoto, and to believe that it will impel greater efforts in conservation, energy efficiency improvement, and technology development.

Bush has promised independent action to reduce CO₂ emissions. As in so many cases, right-wing pressure brought about a measure that is little more than lip service: Announced in 2002, the Bush plan (see page 217) would reduce carbon-dioxide output per dollar of GNP3 by 18 percent over the next decade. The beauty of this (for the neocons) is that GNP will be growing during that decade, so this plan actually allows more CO₂ to enter the atmosphere. And, lax as it is, this plan depends in large part on voluntary industry compliance. Bush also touts technical advances that, when achieved, will help alleviate the problem of global climate change. But signing on to Kyoto would not preclude such advances; indeed, it would provide extra incentive for achieving them.

Developing nations are not required to comply with the Kyoto Protocol because they are, currently, a far smaller source of greenhouse gases than the industrialized countries and because compliance would be a far larger burden on them. The treaty is not immutable; when they have developed, they can be added. Finally — forgive the immodest imagery — the Bush administration saying someone else's science is not solid enough is like Heidi Fleiss complaining that other women are not chaste enough.

Superfund

The 1980 "Superfund" law, highly popular with the public, was hated by industry, especially by the oil and chemical industries. It did have defects, most notably a tendency to foster inter-company lawsuits over who was responsible for any given cleanup. But by 1993 an improved version had been worked out and agreed to by most involved parties. Republican senators managed to filibuster the bill to death, thus denying the Democrats a legislative victory on the eve of the 1994 mid-term elections. After that, having the majority of seats in the Congress, Republicans allowed the tax on oil and chemical industries to expire. Deprived of a major source of support, the Superfund slowly wasted away. During the Clinton years, it had been cleaning up 86 sites a year; by 2002 this had dwindled to 40. At present, new sites are being listed as fast as old ones are cleaned up; net progress has stalled.

Nuclear Power

Pope discusses the problems with nuclear power plants on pages 103-5 and 107-8. He acknowledges that most of the bugs have been worked out of the designs, but points out that the aging facilities have severe maintenance problems. A case in point is the corrosion of the reactor cooling system at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio. In late 2001, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) was informed of leaks at the plant. Investigation disclosed a "pineapple-sized" hole six inches deep in the metal wall of the reactor vessel. A mere quarter-inch of steel remained. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, it was also discovered that radiation sensors had indicated leakage for two years. Plant personnel could not find the leaks. They "solved" the problem by moving the three sensors to a different spot, and even bypassed one of them because it kept triggering alarms.

I am reminded of an anecdote I read in a book on car repair. It seems a motorist on a long trip saw his low-oil light come on. He immediately pulled in to a service station to have the problem fixed. After some hours, he was assured that his car was ready to go and proceeded on his way. Soon, alas, the engine seized up from lack of oil. It developed that the technician had simply removed the bulb from the low-oil light assembly. This is exactly the kind of "problem-solving" done by the technicians at Davis-Besse.

Consider just one presidential directive, announced as Pope's book went to press in late 2003. He writes that per George W. Bush's orders, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will no longer mandate that reactor control wiring be armored against fire damage. Instead, the plant management would be permitted to substitute "operator manual actions". As Pope describes the scenario in his Preface, this means plant workers would be expected to shut down the reactor by hand, running through the flames if necessary to do so. Pope aptly refers to the March 22, 1975 fire at the Browns Ferry plant in Alabama as a glaring example of why that policy is wrong. He is quite right. Indeed, reading the story of that near-disaster will show you that it was not only the physical design of the cable wiring that was inadequate; operator training, safety-equipment maintenance and management oversight were deficient as well. In addition, there was poor communication with local fire, police and civil defense authorities both before and during the incident; some local sheriffs had no copy of the evacuation plan. Finally, the fact that a similar fire two days before was contained and no change in procedures resulted, and the post-incident attempt to minimize disclosure, make this a textbook case of an accident waiting to happen.

About Davis-Besse, the Plain Dealer says in a recent story (September 2004) that this was the fifth most dangerous situation at an American nuclear plant in the last quarter century. That assessment comes from a new NRC analysis. It also found many of the emergency safety systems at Davis-Besse were compromised, either because of poor maintenance or inadequacies in original design. "But," says the Plain Dealer story, "since the analysis ended there, the study did not assess whether those degraded systems would have worked as operators tried to regain control." So much for "operator manual actions".

More generally, the early years of nuclear-plant deployment in this country make it clear that we were extremely lucky that Three Mile Island was our worst reactor accident. Have those years taught us nothing about reactor safety? Clearly, we have learned some things. Nevertheless, experience leads me to doubt whether the training of those operators for the "manual actions" they would be expected to perform will prove adequate. I am likewise dubious that the equipment they will have to rely on will be properly maintained. For this reason, I think it is a poor economy to scrimp on preventive measures in favor of heroic recovery efforts.

However, it seems likely that Pope oversimplifies the account of the presidential directive. I ascribe this to the time pressure the authors were under at this point. I surmise that is also why they put the Browns Ferry plant in Tennessee. (It was being run for the Tennessee Valley Authority.)

More troubling to me is Pope's blanket statement on page 105 that "Nuclear power is a technology no one needs and many fear." That view, in my opinion, is simply misguided. I am on record as a proponent of nuclear power plants, provided that they are well-designed and competently operated. I feel that such plants should be one component of a balanced energy strategy. Also, it's clear that both nuclear power and nuclear weapons will play important roles in opening up the solar system to human activity.

Arsenic and Old Laws

A 1999 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study found that arsenic harms the heart, blood vessels and nervous system, and can also cause birth defects. Carol Browner, Clinton's EPA Administrator, sought to lower its permitted concentration in drinking water to five parts per billion (5 ppb) because studies had found that the current level of 50 ppb (set in 1942) was unsafe and millions of Americans were drinking water with unsafe levels of arsenic. Late in Clinton's administration, after much political wrangling, a level of 10 ppb was enacted. But the Bush administration resisted this new standard. When Christine Whitman4 became EPA Administrator, she announced that she would not implement it but instead would re-study the problem and look for a "more reasonable" number. Pope does not discuss exactly what reason was given for viewing the 10 ppb standard as unreasonable, but he implies that cost-benefit analysis done by John Graham was the justification claimed. Controversy ensued. The uproar gave the Democrats their best political talking points of 2001. In the end, an NAS review upheld the basis of Browner's decision. Bowing to political reality, the Bush administration accepted the 10 ppb standard.

Misunderestimating the Value of Human Life

The Office of Information and Regulatory Assessment (OIRA) is a 50-person unit within the Office of Management and Budget. It was created during the Reagan administration, and its original function was to ensure that every federal regulation was analyzed to see if its benefits were justified by its costs. John Graham (profiled by Pope on pages 51-52) was chosen as its first administrator. He had the power to send any regulation back to the agency that produced it for reconsideration. Pope discusses on pages 63-66 and 68-72 how he used that power.

Cost-benefit analysis of any action to protect human life rests on estimating a monetary value for that life. Pope reports that the usual value is $6 million. But Graham based his estimate on what a British focus group said it would pay for greater safety. This gave him a value of $3.7 million, a 38 percent lower figure. Then he went further, using international studies that found the elderly tended to spend less on avoiding risks than young people. He was thus able to put the value of a senior citizen's life at only $2.3 million. This differential came to be known as the "senior death discount", and it outraged the public. Pope provides one example of its utility (page 71): Factoring the lower valuation into equations that give the monetary benefit of lowering air pollution cuts that benefit from $96B to $11B.

Graham's OIRA continued to uphold the "senior death discount", but Whitman firmly refused to base any action on it. Political pressure forced the administration to disclaim it. Obscured by the furor was the fact that Graham's 38% reduction in the estimated value of any human life became the administration benchmark.

I certainly understand how lowering the assumed value of human life would support the administration's quest to roll back environmental laws. However, I think Pope's treatment of these two admittedly complicated stories — the arsenic-limit battle and Graham's cost-benefit analysis — could have been clearer. For the latter, more comparison cases would have been useful. In particular, it seems disingenuous to cite the drastic reduction in the calculated benefit of air-pollution controls when that reduction is based on assumptions the administration has rejected.

Science Suppressed

Intentional suppression and distortion of scientific studies has been a characteristic of the Bush administration. Government scientists have resigned in protest, and people with long outstanding careers have been fired for questioning official actions. The problem has become so severe that the Union of Concerned Scientists has mounted a campaign against it.5 All areas of study touching on the neoconservative agenda have been affected. Global warming is merely the most prominent example. Some others:

• Interior Secretary Gale Norton claimed that caribou calving areas lay primarily outside the area sought for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge. USGS contract mapmaker Ian Thomas was fired for making public a map showing the true distribution of those calving areas in the ANWR. It was later disclosed that Norton had already been provided with data contradicting her claim.
• Norton also held back or altered peer-reviewed studies on fisheries because the administration did not like their conclusions. In one case this led to a dieoff of 30,000 salmon on the Klamath River when too much of its water was diverted for agriculture.
• In the wake of the World Trade Center destruction, an EPA warning of asbestos contamination in the area was watered down on White House orders. No one will ever know how many cases of lung ailments might have been prevented by an honest announcement, but it's a safe bet that some would have.
• Two government scientists were ordered to withhold their findings that supposedly "dolphin-safe" methods of netting tuna were not really safe for dolphins.
• The Federal Advisory Committee Act provides that advice on complex issues be obtained from impartial groups of experts. The Bush administration has overturned its intent by stuffing committees with biased members, and sometimes by simply abolishing the committee. In one notorious case, 15 members of the 18-member Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Center for Environmental Health were replaced. Not all were "neocon-safe", apparently; but some were. Their number included Dennis Paustenbach, who testified for Pacific Gas and Electric as an expert witness in the chromium-contamination trial triggered by whistleblower Erin Brockovich. (See pages 147-149.)
• Five scientists on a panel considering lower lead-exposure standards for children were replaced by others with pre-existing biases against such standards.
• A report on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, where rangers had begun wearing gas masks against the fumes their engines emitted, had its recommendation that snowmobiles be restricted cut out in order to justify allowing more snowmobile traffic. (And, in the legally required public survey on the question, cards and letters ran four-to-one against permitting the noisy vehicles in the park. The administration simply ignored this input.)
• EPA scientist Bruce Boler was fired for objecting to the government's use of a study — funded by South Florida land developers — that claimed natural wetlands made water pollution problems worse.
• Mike Zahn, a Department of Agriculture scientist, discovered that bacteria resistant to antibiotics could migrate from factory feedlots to neighboring farms. When he was invited to speak by family-farm advocates in Iowa, pork industry lobbyists persuaded the USDA to forbid his appearance.

In keeping with its public-relations strategy, the Bush administration likes to say its policies are based on sound science. Eric Schaeffer, who resigned from the EPA in protest over lax enforcement,6 has this to say: (page 156): " 'Sound science' is a slogan so manipulated that it has lost its meaning. Sound science ought to mean independent, objective research that leads to informed decisions about how best to protect human health and the natural world. Instead, it has come to mean suppressing data that fails to justify desired outcomes and manufacturing data that does."

The Military

Historically, America's military services have been among the worst polluters. However, Pope reports, they have also been extraordinarily innovative in adapting to environmental-protection laws. They pioneered ways to clean aircraft with plastic pellets, abandoning the toxic solvents formerly used. The Defense Department learned to destroy chemical weapons without relying on risky incineration methods.

Nevertheless, in March 2003 Donald Rumsfeld demanded that Congress permanently exempt the Defense Department from all major environmental laws. He claimed these laws would compromise military readiness. Christine Whitman of the EPA told Congress that she knew of no case where it had, and that the military services had never asked for even a temporary exemption already permitted by the law. The reason for Rumsfeld's demand? The evidence (see pages 206-7) suggests an ideological motive.

Big Coal's Big Score

In October 2000, in what has been called the worst ever environmental disaster in the southeast U.S., a coal-slurry pond near Inez, Kentucky leaked into local creeks, contaminating ten counties with toxic levels of heavy metals. Admitting that "we've messed up a bunch of times," officials of Martin Coal Company agreed to clean up the affected area. But when the results of the election came in, they changed their tune. The federal team looking into the incident wanted to impose heavy fines, but the new administration overturned their recommendations. When team member Jack Spadaro protested, he was fired.

Pennsylvania, meanwhile, had a problem with its coal-company bonding program. The companies were supposed to post bonds sufficient to cover mine restoration if they folded, but lax oversight had led to a funding shortfall. When the state was sued and settled, the federal government stepped in and authorized it to collect far lower amounts than agreed. The feds also relaxed the national rules that required coal companies to prove they were solvent. The message was clear.

Ve Are Closed Now!

Another characteristic of the current administration is extreme secrecy. Deliberations to formulate a new energy policy were held behind closed doors. Cheney, the leader of the energy policy task force, has fought for two years against releasing the names of participants, appealing court decisions that went against him all the way to the Supreme Court. The matter is still not settled, and probably will not be until after the November elections.7 What is clear about the composition of this policy-formulating panel, however, is that it did not include environmentalists, energy-conservation experts (like Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute), or citizen consumer watchdog agencies. But, Pope reports (page 109), the Sierra Club can't say it wasn't consulted. Late on the afternoon of 21 March 2001, an Energy Department staffer called its Washington, DC office to ask for inputs on energy and the environment — delivered within 48 hours, please. And on 4 April, task force energy director Andrew Lundquist met for an hour with 15 representatives of various environmental groups. This meeting lasted just long enough for all attendees to introduce themselves. Then, Pope says (page 110), they were hustled out the door — and, unlike all others the task force consulted, into a press conference. Obviously the administration took these steps to give the appearance of balance.

The Bush administration does not hide just its actions touching environmental matters. Bush holds far fewer press conferences than most presidents. Reporters who ask tough questions in such conferences are liable to lose access to the White House, and some have even gotten late-night harassing phone calls. Policy changes are often announced late on a Friday, when press coverage is less complete, and it appears that some administration officials may be using terrorism alerts to distract the public from other matters. There is a pattern of resistance to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) per a directive from John Ashcroft (see page 169) and when court battles go against the administration, the winners often find much of the information in the documents they fought to get is redacted (blacked out).

A Pattern of Perfidy

I've tried to show here why the Bush administration is an enemy of the environment. The evidence I present is only a small portion of what you can turn up with a little research. Browse the Web sites I link to above, and those of other environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council. Read Carl Pope's book. To learn about Bush administration performance in other areas, read Al Franken's Lies and also The Book on Bush — both reviewed in this section of my site. For background on Bush's performance as Governor of Texas, read Molly Ivins' Shrub, also reviewed here.

It's only a month until the first Tuesday in November. This election coming up is important. Read some newspapers. Watch the news on television. Listen to NPR's All Things Considered. Do a little research. Get informed, make your choice, and then vote!

I am not a member of any political party, but if I were walking in Memphis (or any other city) and a woman asked me if I were a Democrat, I'd say "Ma'am, I am this month!" I believe my position is apparent. To make it crystal-clear, let me put it this way: George W. Bush and his right-wing science-debasing, secrecy-demanding, civil-liberty-threatening cronies have amply demonstrated why they don't deserve to hold political office. Vote them out in November.

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