[Mb-civic] Bush-Cheney: A Mean Kind of Green

[Michael Butler]

    Bush-Cheney: A Mean Kind of Green
    By Kelpie Wilson
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

     Tuesday 10 August 2004

     Now that the Democrats have officially nominated the Kerry-Edwards
ticket, and the two have pledged to make environmental issues a key part of
their campaign, the Republicans will have to respond.

     Republican strategist Frank Luntz sent a memo earlier this year to
congressional Republicans warning that they are vulnerable on the
environment. The leaked memo revealed the plan: deny, deny, deny that the
environment is deteriorating and insist that things are only getting better.

     Bush-Cheney have already begun to roll out campaign season gimmicks
meant to paint a green sheen on the team, but it doesn't take much to see
right through the surface of these announcements to the nothingness
underneath. Here are some examples from the last few weeks:

     Making headlines in all the major news media was the announcement that
EPA was considering lawsuits against 22 power plants under the "new source
review" regulation that requires operators to install the best pollution
control technology on new or upgraded plants. What the administration did
not reveal was that they have been delaying this enforcement action for
years and that the Justice Department does not have the funding to bring the
cases anyway. No lawsuits will be filed. It was all just election year talk.

     Closely following the bogus enforcement announcement was the news that
EPA had awarded a record $30 million research grant to the University of
Washington to study the effects of air pollution on cardiovascular health.
But the administration failed to explain why the study is needed.

     Only a month previously the American Heart Association published the
results of its study that concluded that the link between air pollution and
heart disease is unambiguous. In order to appear to be doing something about
the problem, the Bush administration has decided to study it to death. As a
side benefit, the study will use up funds that could have been spent on
enforcement.

     Sharing is seen as a nice thing, especially in an election year, and so
the administration announced the Bush plan for sharing methane-recovery
technology with poor countries. This technology is routinely used in the
U.S. to recover methane gas from landfills that is then used to fuel power
plants. Bush said the goals of the program are to "increase energy security,
improve environmental quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

     But sharing means something different to the Bush administration than
it does to you and me. The Bush plan is to give a $53 million subsidy to
U.S. corporations to develop methane recovery technology that they can then
sell to poor countries. The only "sharing" here is U.S. taxpayers once again
sharing their hard-earned money with corporations.

     The Bush strategists are masters of the shell game, and their proposal
last week to change the rules for selling public land is a fine example of
their art. The current rules allow the Bureau of Land Management to sell
land near cities and use the proceeds to purchase more ecologically valuable
lands for protection. The new rules would allow the BLM to keep 20% of the
proceeds to fund their programs.

     The administration is promoting this as a green initiative to provide
more money for the BLM's conservation programs, but the reality is that it
would create a huge incentive for the chronically under funded agency to
sell-off public land. The proposal is sure to please those right-wing
ideologues who believe that even the National Parks would be better off if
privatized, while generating a green smoke screen as cover.

     Cheney paid a visit to my swing state home last week, speaking to a
crowd of 3,000 at the county fairgrounds in Medford, Oregon. There he made
sure to get in plenty of "big hair" taunts aimed at Edwards and tout the
centerpiece of the administration's environmental "accomplishments": the
Healthy Forests Initiative.

     The heart of the Healthy Forests Initiative is a slew of regulatory
changes designed to open the way for more logging. The administration deftly
used the fear of wildfire to force acceptance of the changes which reduce or
eliminate public input into forest management decisions.

     The parallels with Iraq are irresistible. Way out in the forest, trees
of mass destruction are just waiting to burst into flames and bring
conflagration down on our communities. Except that all the sensible people
agree that the greatest danger is the small diameter re-growth that crowds
in around houses and towns.

     Real homeland security can only be provided by thinning those small,
densely packed trees. But the timber industry is not interested. They have
their sights set on the big trees in the backcountry. It will cost money to
protect these homes and towns near the forests, and just like Homeland
Security, there is not enough money to do the job.

     Congress passed the Healthy Forests Act last year authorizing $760
million for fuel reduction, and Bush claims to have fully funded it in the
2005 budget, but the reality is different:

     "The President has used the same creative accounting tactics as Enron
and WorldCom to make it appear as though he is fully funding the Healthy
Forests Act," said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) in a written statement about
the budget. "In truth, his budget steals from other Forest Service programs
to fund thinning projects and ultimately leaves the agency unprepared to
fight forest fires and do the fuels reduction work that will create jobs and
begin to return our forests to their natural state."

     The hyping of these mean, measly, fake green initiatives stands in
stark contrast to the standard Bush modus operandi around environmental
issues. The Bush administration record on the environment consists almost
entirely of a series of rollbacks of popular environmental protections for
air, water, wildlife, parks and forests. In almost every case, these
rollbacks were announced to the public on Fridays, ensuring that they would
miss the major news cycles and most people would simply never hear about
them.

     While the Bush team may not know beans about forests, they understand
the American political ecosystem all too well. They know that the news media
thinks with a reptile brain. They can propose the most outlandishly brown
initiatives, and as long as they attach even the tiniest sparkly green lure,
reporters will bite on it and swallow the hook.

     This state of affairs is only possible because the American public's
concern level for the environment is still fairly low. Polls routinely rate
environmental concerns below the economy, terror, war, education, health
care and crime. However, when asked what their concerns for the future are,
people rank the environment as number one or two.

     Despite all the green smoke and mirrors promoted by Republicans and the
corporate establishment, people know that an environmental day of reckoning
is due. What the Democrats need to do is start preparing us for the
realization that that day is now. With climate change accelerating, oceans
dying and fossil fuels running out, we don't have a lot of time to turn
things around.

     Environmental concerns have the huge disadvantage of being technically
complex and sound-bite unfriendly. What we need more than anything else
right now is leaders who will tell us the truth about the sorry state of our
environment and help educate us by connecting the dots.

     Kerry's campaign plank linking renewable energy development with energy
independence and national security is an example of the kind of leadership
we need. I hope it is not an isolated example but the beginning of a new era
of honesty and courage in American politics. Our very survival depends on
it.

  

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