Featured Issues: October 2001

Environment Under Attack

The Bush administration hopes the American public will be so distracted and distraught by its weekly terrorist attack warnings that we will all ignore their behind the scenes maneuvering to push though their anti-environmental agenda.  The Bushies are continuing to rollback and dismantle the Clinton environmental legacy, in favor of industry incentives and laxer pollution standards.  But fearing another legitimate public outcry, like when they arrogantly decided that a century-old standard for arsenic in drinking water was acceptable, now the Bush administration is being stealthy and surreptitious, trying to keep their moves out of the public eye. 

The Interior Department has rolled back hard-rock mining standards set by President Clinton, disingenuously claiming these rules were last minute, when in fact they had been in process for years.  The rules simply required these industries to prove they could afford to clean up after themselves and to stop dumping toxic chemicals into people's groundwater.  While industries sue to have the government's own rules weakened, rather than defending the law, the Bush Interior Department is cooperating with industry to produce weaker regulations.  "Much of the assault on the Clinton rules is occurring under the radar, in obscure courtrooms where industry is challenging them, and in closed-door negotiations that shield the administration from public accountability. Industry lawsuits against government rules are hardly unusual. What is unusual is the administration's decision to use this litigation as an excuse to weaken, through settlement talks, popular rules that it would prefer not to attack directly."  Norton's Disaster Brigade also wants to reconsider snowmobile restrictions in Yellowstone Park, an activity that is overwhelmingly opposed by over a million people who responded to public inquiry when Mr. Clinton considered the issue.  Finally, and most egregiously, the administration will abrogate a Forest Service rule protecting millions of acres of NATIONAL FOREST (yours and mine!) from mining, logging and drilling, by simply refusing to defend industry lawsuits appearing in court

This administration is an enemy of the environment, and needs to be exposed and opposed.  The ONLY things that matter to Bush Inc. are the wallets of their fat industry friends and campaign contributors.  Take your tax refunds, your voices or your legs and get involved in local or national conservation groups.  The majority of Americans favor conservation of our national heritage and environmental protection.  Unfortunately. not enough Americans make this known with their contributions or their voting power.  Environmentalism would become a viable political position if the people support it.  So, please, put your money where your mouth is.  Once a forest or a species is gone, it may never return.  

Jane Goodall Predicts the Extinction of the Great Apes in 10-15 Years

"Despite international conservation laws, the export of bushmeat has become a booming business in parts of Africa, Goodall says. Meat from chimpanzees, gorillas and other animals is shipped as far away as Europe and North America, where it is considered by some to be a culinary delicacy.  Unless this wholesale slaughter is stopped, Goodall and other primatologists and conservationists predict the great apes - our closest relatives on the evolutionary tree - will be extinct within 10 to 15 years."  Visit Dian Fossey's Gorilla Fund.   

Oppose Drilling in the ANWR

The Bush Environmental Disaster Watch

Environment and Conservation Articles

Issues Archive

Defenders of Wildlife

Want to see how your Representatives are voting on environmental issues?

 For more information, visit the League of Conservation Voters!

This page provides links to sites of interest to those who care about the environment, endangered species and the preservation of our planet and all its inhabitants. We humans are a short-sighted species. All of the debating about budgets and entitlements and even war are meaningless if we destroy the planet on which we all must reside. The destruction of our planet will affect our progeny ad infinitum.

Organizations
National Wildlife Federation
Friends of the Earth
Greenpeace
The Nature Conservancy
The Audubon Society    

The Sierra Club