[Mb-civic] NEW BOOK BY NOTED JOURNALIST SKEWERS BUSH ON ENVIRONMENT

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

BUSHGREENWATCH
Tracking the Bush Administration's Environmental Misdeeds
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org
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August 12, 2004

NEW BOOK BY NOTED JOURNALIST SKEWERS BUSH ON ENVIRONMENT 

More than 30 years ago, prize-winning journalist Ed Flattau
began writing the country's first nationally syndicated column
on the environment, and for the past four years he has occupied
a ringside seat at George W. Bush's assault against nature. 

Now Flattau has written a new book, Peering Through The Bushes
(Xlibris Publishing), that dissects the administration's assault
on the environment and exposes the many fallacies on which the
President bases environmental policy. 

Flattau understood the nature of the Administration early on.
Quoting from a diary he kept in the first months of the Bush
presidency, he wrote in July 2001, "In the six months that Bush
has been in office, he has managed to make us one of the most
despised nations in the world." Two months earlier, he wrote
"One wonders if he is capable of ever conceding he is wrong." 

Flattau reviews Bush's deplorable record on the environment as
governor of Texas, when that state was 49th in spending to
acquire new parklands. In 1999 Houston became the city with the
nation's worst air quality, passing Los Angeles. In his entire
two terms as governor, Bush never once proposed clean air
legislation. 

As governor, Mr. Bush allowed oil, gas, and chemical companies
to avoid mandatory emission reductions, calling instead for
voluntary reductions. Surprise: fewer than 10 percent of those
companies heeded his call. Describing the President's practice
of favoring industry over the environment at every juncture,
Flattau writes that the President talks like a populist but acts
like a plutocrat.

Under the banners of "balance" and "sound science," Flattau
documents how the President and his cohorts have worked to undo
almost every aspect of the nation's environmental progress of
the past 40 years. 

Wherever possible, the administration cloaks its attack on the
environment in soothing words like "healthy forests initiative"
and "clear skies initiative," while delivering the opposite.
Flattau describes how the administration scorns UN and other
international treaties designed to protect the environment,
leaving many countries to conclude that the U.S. has virtually
become a rogue nation. 

Flattau also shows how the President has stacked scientific
advisory boards with scientists whose views often lie well
outside the mainstream, and how he has chosen top-level advisors
who have spent their professional careers working to roll back
environmental progress. 

A case in point is Interior Secretary Gale Norton, who couches
her ultraconservative ideological approach in such low-key ways
that she has escaped close public scrutiny. 

Even though Secretary Norton is charged with protecting
America's public lands, she has led the administration's battle
to open the biologically rich coastal plain of the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge -- and other irreplaceable sites -- to
oil drilling. Flattau recounts how Norton suppressed a U.S,
Geological Survey report concluding that oil development in the
Refuge would seriously harm wildlife populations.

Peering Through The Bushes ends with Flattau's conclusion that
George W. Bush is the worst environmental president in the
nation's history, "surpassing the previous titleholder, Ronald
Reagan." 

Still, Flattau finds hope in a growing grassroots upsurge of
opposition to the President's environmental policies--
opposition even from Mr. Bush's core constituencies, such as
ranchers and sportsmen in the Rocky Mountain region, who prize
their wildlife, clean rivers, and glorious scenery. 

### 

Peering Through The Bushes is available online at Amazon and
Borders. Single book orders can be obtained from Xlibris
Publishing Corp. or at 1-888-795-4274. Copies will be available
in bookstores in September. 

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Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
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