By Staff
Hurricane Katrina broke an oil pipeline, spilling 7.5 million barrels of crude on the ground.
Yazel also wags his head at the brewing "Love Canal."
Not all bad ecological decisions have been made under crisis conditions, however.
Some have been made casually and deliberately.
Back at the ranch, in the Sept. 20 Rolling Stone Tim Dickinson chronicles the Bush administration "reversing more environmental progress in the past eight months than Ronald Reagan did in a full eight years."
Seems we have a timber lobbyist in charge of national forests and an oil lobbyist in charge of government reports on global warming. And the mining industry is permitted to pump toxic waste directly into a wild Alaskan lake.
The second term has only "intensified" the "assault" on protections.
Since 2000 there has been a 75-percent drop in federal lawsuits for environmental violations and a 75-percent increase in permits for oil and gas drilling on federal lands.
There has been a 60-percent decline in federal fines against industrial polluters to a 14-year low. There are 220 endangered species living in 58.5 million acres of pristine forests opened to developers.
Republican majorities in both houses of Congress Aug. 8 signed into law Bush's long-stalled energy bill, combining $10 billion in oil, gas and coal subsidies while exempting Halliburton from environmental laws.
We are being transported in the Way-Back Machine to the Eisenhower administration, before the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 - the legacy of that notorious liberal Richard Nixon.
The Clinton administration declared brain-damaging mercury a "threat to public health" and ordered coal plants to slash emissions 90 percent by 2008.
Industry lobbyists wrote whole sections of the new rule the EPA implemented in March.
His state is one of 13 suing to overturn the rule.
Oh, I don't know.
Public outrage is credited with forcing the administration to back off one of its "wildest schemes" - "blending" raw sewage into drinking water.
Last year taxpayers spent almost $49 million extending roads into Tongass National Forest in Alaska while the federal treasury collected less than $800,000 in industry royalties.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "I'm not on anyone's side. There is no side that has an absolute answer. That's the trouble with politics. You might say, 'The Republican take on the Middle East is incorrect.' The Democratic policy wasn't that brilliant, either. It's a scary time. Since I wrote (Sweet Neo Con), London's gotten even scarier … Walking around, seeing machine guns, is not how you imagine London to be. If we keep going down this track, we're not going to get back … we'll go too far, get away from our original values, and this overreaching imperialism will take us to a place where we eventually collapse."