Bush's destruction of the environment, by Ralph Cutter

Want four more?

Yes I do. My kids sleep safe because of him and our Milotary.

Hats off to you great people.




The Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow. A nice warm vibratey feeling all
through your guttiwuts.

Want four more?

Yes I do. My kids sleep safe because of him and our Milotary.

Hats off to you great people.




The Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow. A nice warm vibratey feeling all
through your guttiwuts.

Thanks for posting more reasons to vote for President Bush this year.
Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

Want four more?


YES - definitely, especially give the choice of four years of Kerry.
Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

Want four more?


YES - definitely, especially give the choice of four years of Kerry.
Ronnie

http://fishing.about.com

I read the article in flyfisherman and am guessing this is the same
article. As a bunch of people mention
the problem is that it takes decades if not centuries to fix the damage
if thats even possible. What I especially found interesting was the
statement that moneys for fire prevention was being rerouted from SoCal
to help build access roads in the Tongas. I havent heard of any fires in
the Tongas, where as SoCal is a completely different story. So it seems
to be very obvious why thats being done.

The short sightedness of these policies is truely sad. And since Im not a
citizen I have no ability to directly influence the choice in November.

katie star wrote:

Ralph Cutter's article

Posted By: Scan Man
Date: 9/24/04 8:59 a.m.

Bushwhack, Ransack, Pillage and Plunder

Four years ago George Bush promised us fly fishers that he would be in
our corner; he would be the Sportsmanâ??s President. That was the
promise, elections are around the corner, and it is time to revue the
fruits of the promise he made to you and me.

"Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We
want to be able to exploit the environment for private gain,
absolutely." Ron Arnold, founder, Alliance for America.

In 1996 and again in 1998 the keynote speaker for the radical
rightâ??s Alliance for America was Mark Rey. President Bush appointed
Mark Rey as the Undersecretary for Natural Resources and the
Environment. Rey is now responsible for the care and management of our
National Forests and Grasslands. His counterpart responsible for
nurturing the remainder of our public lands is James Wattâ??s
protégé, Gale Norton.

Mark Rey and Gale Norton hold the noose from which dangles our public
lands and our natural resources. George Bushâ??s perspective of the
environment can be measured by the selection of Rey, Norton, and over
thirty other of his hand-picked representatives of extractive
corporations to â??manageâ?? our nationâ??s air, land and water.

The charade has become so transparent that during nomination hearings,
Michael Leavitt barely pretended to be an environmental advocate even
though he was being considered for director of the Environmental
Protection Agency. He was ushered into office by a Republican block
and in his first weeks dropped fifty investigations of violations of
the Clean Air Act and scrapped new regulations on toxic mercury
emissions from coal fired power plants. President Bush hailed
Leavittâ??s actions as â??visionaryâ??.

In a little over three years George Bush has set in motion a tsunami
of environmental destruction that is unlikely to be completely
stopped, much less mitigated in any of our lifetimes. His Secretary of
the Interior has declared that not another inch of land will be added
to Wilderness. If the administration has its way, this is as good as
it will ever get, and weâ??re sliding backwards at a terrifying and
accelerating rate.

The Word Game

A political pollster, brilliant spinster and obvious student of George
Orwell, Frank Luntz has been instrumental in crafting Bushâ??s public
image. Orwellâ??s fictitious Newspeak has been born to reality under
Luntz and Bush mouths the words with the confidence of a man who
doesnâ??t even realize heâ??s in the con game. Orwellâ??s forced labor
prisons became joycamps, death, peacenap. Bushâ??s clear cutting and
air polluting practices have been perverted by Luntzspeak into the
Healthy Forests and Clean Skies initiatives. When the administration
wants to sell the public on environmental gutting they call it
streamlining and the word logging has been replaced with the
light-on-the-lips thinning.

A fair balance between the environment and the economy. Safer,
cleaner, healthier. Accountability. It will not be easy. Sound
science. Common sense approach. and It can be done more wisely, are
all Luntz-approved words and phrases developed by teams of
psychologists and refined in focus groups for the express purpose of
selling Americans on the idea that it is okay, even patriotic, to turn
our national lands, air, and water over to industry. When listening
for these terms in a Bush speech one quickly realizes that they are
meaningless and frequently not even used in context with the message.
It is cutting-edge subliminal brainwashing of the American people
known in the military as psych ops.

Clean Skies

Fish need clean air even more than humans do. Airborne pollutants such
as sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide mix with atmospheric water and
oxygen, cook under the sun, and fall back to earth as sulfuric and
nitric acid. Until the Bush administration took office, the Federal
Government viewed the effects of acid deposition as undeniably
serious. Entire watersheds are devoid of amphibians and trout because
the lakes, rivers and streams are now too acidic to support life. But
Republican House whip Tom DeLay says of acid deposition, â??Acid rain?
All you gotta do is pour a little lime in a few lakesâ??.
Tailpipe exhaust, industrial emissions and agricultural activity
contribute to acid deposition, but a full two thirds of atmospheric
sulpher dioxide and over one fourth of the nitrous oxide is generated
by coal fired power plants. It is these same coal burning power plants
that produce some forty percent, or nearly 50 tons annually, of our
mercury pollution.

Mercury is extremely toxic and developing fetuses exposed to tiny
amounts can suffer permanent neurological damage. According to the
Center for Disease Control 5 million American woman across all
socio-economic classes currently harbor dangerous levels of mercury.
The primary source of this mercury is from eating fish. Mercury is
stored in the flesh and as it moves through the food web the heavy
metal becomes increasingly concentrated. Top level predators such as
tuna, trout, and striped bass become toxic mercury sinks.

Under the Clean Air Act industry was to reduce mercury emissions 90%
by 2008. According to the EPA the total cost would have been less than
1% of a plantâ??s revenues. Bush pulled the rug out from under the
Clean Air Act by unveiling his own â??Clean Skiesâ?? initiative. Clean
Skies was crafted behind closed doors by administration officials
coached by coal companies and electric utilities. According to
senators in the know, â??entire sections of text were lifted verbatim
from industry memorandaâ??. At the same time Bushâ??s political
appointees at EPA excluded the agencyâ??s own professional staff and
tossed out a federal advisory panelâ??s input.

EPA staffers said they were told not to undertake the normal
scientific and economic studies required by law. Veterans in the EPA
say they cannot recall another instance when technical experts were
cut out of developing a major regulatory proposal. John Paul, an Ohio
Republican who co-chaired the EPA appointed advisory panel said that
21 months of work on mercury was completely ignored.

The Orwellian â??Clean Skiesâ?? initiative now gives corporate
polluters 15 years to cut emissions 70%, instead of 3 years to cut
90%. Clean Skies also makes it clear that carbon dioxide is not to be
considered a pollutant and therefore denies the EPA any authority to
regulate its emissions. The overwhelming body of science points to
carbon dioxide as the primary pollutant responsible for global
warming, but as Gale Norton says, we shouldnâ??t be in any hurry to do
anything about it. "Even if the global warming theory is real, we will
do more long-term harm to the planet than good by rushing forward with
half-solutions." In the meantime, the energy corporations are saving
billions of dollars and you and I and our planet are paying the price.

Despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, many in the
administration choose to look at anything but the facts to bolster
their pro polluter agenda. As spinmaster Luntz advised the
Republicans, â??You need to make the lack of scientific certainty a
primary issue in the debate.â?? Tom DeLay declared that global warming
is â??junk scienceâ?? at its very core because it is based on data
that dates back hundreds of thousands of years. He quotes the Bible
which states the world is only 6,000 years old. DeLay says, â??It is
only the arrogance of man for man to think he can change the climate
of the worldâ??.

Healthy Forests

Approximately 95% of Americaâ??s old growth forests have been logged.
Three quarters of the small fraction of old growth remaining resides
on National Forest land where it shelters endangered species, protects
watersheds, and most importantly gives us a living window into the
past where scientists, foresters and the common person alike can
experience what a real forest is supposed to look, smell, sound, and
feel like.

To protect the intrinsic values of the remaining old growth, one of
the most exhaustive rule making processes in American history was
undertaken. Three years of public hearings and over a million public
comments resulted in the Roadless Area Conservation Rule (RACR).
Before it was finalized, the rule was subjected to yet another million
public comments. Of the total 2.2 million public comments received,
95% were in strong favor of environmental protection. As Carl Pope of
the Sierra Club said, â??The need for conservation was clear, the
science was sound, and public support overwhelmingâ??. In a nutshell,
RACR prohibited new roads from being cut into virgin forests.

Past timber industry gun, and Bushâ??s appointee to oversee the US
Forests Service, Mark Rey claimed that environmental regulations
needed to be â??re-examined, reviewed, and re-openedâ??. Rey declared
that RARC was â??flawedâ?? and invited states to â??seek relief for
exceptional circumstancesâ?? by suing his own Forest Service. Alaska
accepted the offer, sued over RARC, and the Bush administration
quickly wrote them an exemption to the Roadless rule. Western
governors were invited by Reyâ??s office to join Alaska in seeking
exemptions for their states.

The reaction from the timber industry was understandably ecstatic, but
perhaps not quite so expected was the immediate uproar from hard core
GOP sportsmen who realized they had been sold out by their president.
The Tongass National Forest contains the largest remaining tract of
roadless old growth in the nation. It is a land of misty fjords, cloud
raking peaks, and ridge after ridge of virgin forest, and clean
rivers. . . over 5,000 rivers in the Tongass support trout and salmon.
It is home to some of the most spectacular fish and wildlife
populations in the world. With Reyâ??s approval and Bushâ??s
encouragement, fifty industrial clear cutting operations are setting
siege on the Tongass.

The Northern Sportsmen Network sent a petition of outrage to the
Forest Service. It was signed by 470 gun clubs from across the nation
including 40 from Texas itself. The NSN constituency is typified by
Greg Petrich who organized the petition. Petrich is a life long
Republican with a degree in gunsmithing and a love for the outdoors.
Petrich says, â??I respect Bush but I just canâ??t believe he is doing
this. The right thing is so obvious, itâ??s a no-brainer. This is an
unparalleled part of the American landscape . . . we urge the
Department (of Agriculture) to leave the Tongass protections
intact.â??

The truly obscene twist about opening up the Tongass (and our other
roadless National Forests) is that it will cost the government tens of
millions of dollars for the privilege of having our wildlands
destroyed. The US Forest Service itself estimates that largely due to
tourism, hunting and fishing, a Tongass tree left standing is worth
thirty times more than when it is converted into lumber. In 2002,
Tongass logging revenue netted the government $1.2 million, yet the US
Forest Service spent $36. million to build roads to access the timber.
In twenty years over $1. billion has been spent by the government in
the Tongass. It is nothing less than a massive welfare plan for the
timber industry. With a deficit of over $500 billion, one would think
that Bush would be looking for ways to save taxpayerâ??s money.

Congress, sensitive to the publicâ??s growing ire over Bushâ??s
predilection for deficit spending, threatened to ban â??below-costâ??
logging contracts. Before it could act and anger Bushâ??s timber
lobby, the perfect solution was presented by Carl Rove and Frank
Luntz. Timber harvest plans were renamed â??fire prevention plansâ??,
and logging was renamed â??fuels reductionâ?? or more simply
â??thinningâ??. The taxpayer anger over welfare logging was assuaged
and the timber industry got their subsidized lumber. To hoodwinked
communities it even appeared that their fire safety was being taken
seriously.

One of the largest communities at-risk for wildfire is the urban
interface of Los Angeles County where it abuts the Angeles National
Forest. Unfortunately the Angeles doesnâ??t produce the massive stands
of old growth trees so lusted by the timber industry. The Angeles
received virtually nothing in â??fire preventionâ?? funding while
miniscule townships in rural Alaska received more â??fire
preventionâ?? monies than all of Southern California combined. While
the urban wildland interface is choked with brush and low value trees
waiting to burn, tax funded roads are winding deep into the wilderness
so that multi national corporations can cut 1,000 year old trees in
the name of fire prevention. In May, at the start of the 2004 fire
season, the Bush Administration cut the US Forest Service fire
fighting task force by 30%, in part, so it could redirect fire
suppression funds toward wilderness road building for the timber
industry.

Clean, Responsible Energy

The Bush energy policy is not so much a policy as it is a mandate,
â??find more fossil fuels, exploit it, and burn it.â?? Monies target
for researching alternative fuels have been adroitly redirected into
drilling operations. Conservation measures have been scraped as
â??feel goodâ?? policies pushed on the American public by
environmental extremists.

In the process of kowtowing to the energy industry, Bush has alienated
a wide swath of Rocky Mountain sportsmen, ranchers, and urbanites
alike. Methane may be a â??cleanâ?? fuel, but the practice of
extracting it is anything but. Coal bed methane (CBM) extraction is a
process where massive quantities of water are pumped out of the ground
to allow trapped methane deposits to be captured. The pumping depletes
ancient groundwater reserves and much of the extracted water is loaded
with heavy metals, various salts and other toxic pollutants. At a cost
of about a nickel per cubic foot, this toxic effluent could be
injected back into the aquifer; however, it is cheaper to simply flush
it into the watershed â?" including some of the finest trout streams
in America.

The process of extracting the CBM pocks the landscape with polluting
wellheads and a lattice of roads that shred across private
landholdings of cities, homeowners, and ranchers who rarely own the
rights to the minerals under their feet. The growth in development has
been monumental. When Bush was elected some 5,000 wells dotted the
Powder River Basin â?" in 6 years there could be over 50,000.
Exploitation throughout the Mountain West is exploding with a gold
rush fervor and never-look-back mentality encouraged by the Bush
Administration.

Historically conservative Republicans are turning on their president.
Tweeti Blancett ran the Bush campaign in Garfield County, New Mexico
(home of the San Juan River); she feels bitterly betrayed by the
Sportsmenâ??s President who was sold her and her constituency down the
tubes in favor of big energy. In the High Country News Blancett
stated, â??I once believed that if the President knew about the damage
done to our land by the energy industry, the damage would cease.â?? It
has only gotten worse, and worse in a big way. â??We once used to run
600 cows . . . today, we can barely keep 100. Grass and shrubs are now
roads, drill pads, or scars left by pipeline paths. Our cows get run
over by trucks servicing the wells or they get poisoned when they lap
up the sweet anti-freeze leaking out of unfenced compressors.â??

In Choteau, Montana, Stoney Burke, a lifelong conservative Republican
spoke of CBM, â??Iâ??m not an environmentalist . . . but I would
consider anyone who would violate this (Rocky Mountain) front my
enemy. I guarantee you that if this thing (CBM drilling) is approved,
there will be a lot of us lying down in front of bulldozers.â??

In Cheneyâ??s own conservative home state, Wyoming, Republican Eli
Bebout lost his position in the house after declaring CBM was good for
the state. Bebout was ousted by a Democrat who ran on a platform
opposing Bush CBM policies. He called for a â??Wyoming wayâ?? of
extraction that protected local communities as well as the
environment.

No Salmon Left Behind

Trout and salmon like water, clean water, and plenty of it.
Unfortunately fish donâ??t buy votes, so when push comes to shove big
monied interests get the nod. In an effort to steer votes toward an
unpopular Oregon Republican senator (Bush lost Oregon by less than 1%)
Karl Rove and the President himself traveled to the Beaver State to
assure them that it was in the best interests of corporate agriculture
to support Senator Smith. â??Weâ??ll do everything we can to make sure
water is available for those of you that farmâ??, promised Bush.

Rove made several trips back to Oregon to meet with agricultural
interests and subsequently the White House formed a cabinet level task
force to rationalize taking negotiated water from fish and wildlife
and giving it to agriculture. According to Michael Kelly, a National
Marine Fisheries Service biologist, NMFS was subjected to direct
political pressure to accept the Bush plan and ordered to suppress
scientific studies suggesting otherwise. â??We were directed to get
the â??rightâ?? results.â?? Kelly received protection under the
Federal Whistle blower law and ultimately resigned from the service.
In his resignation letter he writes, â??I speak for many of my fellow
biologists who are embarrassed and disgusted by the agency's apparent
misuse of scienceâ??.

Three months after Bushâ??s visit to Oregon, Gale Norton stood cheek
to jowl with Senator Smith and opened the gates to divert water from
the Klamath River into the neighboring sagebrush. It was a well
choreographed in-your-face demonstration to Indian, environmental, and
fishing interests that despite long standing agreements, the
agricultural base would get 100% water deliveries and the others could
fight among themselves over what puddles might be left.

Throughout the summer biologists warned the Bush Administration that
too much water was being diverted and a disaster was looming. In
September over 33,000 Chinook, coho, and steelhead lay gasping in the
tepid pools of what water remained in the Lower Klamath River. It was
one of the largest human caused fish kills in American history. It was
apparent to the most casual observer that the fish had run out of
water. California Department of Fish and Game Biologists confirmed the
obvious. But Bush Administration called the fish kill a mystery and
blamed it on everything from â??overcrowdingâ?? to disease. When a
Federal investigation concluded that, yes, lack of water had killed
the fish, it was suppressed for months before being leaked to the
public. A Federal judge ruled the water diversion a violation of the
Endangered Species Act, but self righteous administration officials
were quick to point out that only a narrow portion of the biological
opinion was violated.

Salmon and trout face a gauntlet of threats laid down by the
administration in a concerted effort to give natural resources to
corporate lobbyists. Despite common sense and a multitude of studies
including the National Academy of Sciences report declaring critical
habitat â??an essential component of any program to protect endangered
speciesâ??. In May 2003, the Administration simply declared that
designating critical habitat for endangered species had no value for
protecting wildlife. When two US Fish and Wildlife reports came to the
conclusion that critical habitat was, indeed, critical, Gale Norton
had them withheld from the public.

Up until Bush, a species listed as â??sensitiveâ?? was managed in
large part as if it were threatened. The administrationâ??s new Forest
Management plan doesnâ??t treat sensitive species any differently than
it does one that is abundant. The plan also includes verbiage that
allows a threatened species to be exterminated from its historic range
if a viable population can be found elsewhere (a zoo for example?).

Bush adopted another rule that authorizes the Forest Service or BLM to
use their own in-house biologists to determine if an endangered
species would be harmed under proposed land use practices. In other
words, the agency whose primary job is logging, mining or grazing
would make the determination if such practices are harmful. No longer
would US Fish and Wildlife or National Marine Fisheries experts be
consulted prior to clear cutting along the river bank above endangered
salmon spawning grounds.

In another blow targeted directly at Pacific salmon but with far
reaching ramifications elsewhere, the Bush Administration, despite a
bedrock of scientific evidence to the contrary, declared that hatchery
fish could be counted as â??naturalâ?? fish to determine the health of
the species. This ploy has long been the proposed love child of Mark
Rutzick a timber industry lawyer from Portland, Oregon. Rutzick was
suggested for the position as Legal Advisor to the National Marine
Fisheries Service by none other than Senator Gordon H. Smith (remember
Norton cheek to jowl diverting the Klamath into the sagebrush?).
Evidence is abundantly clear that hatcheries have contributed to the
demise of natural populations of salmon. Administration officials
bucked input from their own biologists by announcing, "Just as natural
habitat provides a place for fish to spawn and to rear, also
hatcheries can do that."

â??Spillâ?? is the seasonal release of water over dams to assist
salmon smolts in their journey seaward. Without spill to redirect
them, baby salmon get funneled into penstocks and minced by hydro
electric turbines. Eliminating spill in 2004 will reduce returns of
adult salmon and steelhead in the Columbia River by at least 10,000 in
both 2006 and 2007. Every drop of water released for salmon translates
in lost revenue for the power industry. Despite a tidal wave of
evidence supporting the positive effects of spill, the Bush
administration prefers a lone study funded by the Northwest Power
Planning Council that questions the effectiveness of the practice. The
Luntzism, â??You need to make the lack of scientific certainty a
primary issue in the debateâ??, can be found at every bend of the
river.

On a pleasant fall evening in Saginaw, Michigan, President George W.
Bush announced to a crowd of supporters, â??I know the human being and
fish can coexist peacefullyâ??. He has yet to unveil that roadmap for
peace.

--

Svend

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