BUSH'S SAD RECORD ON THE ENVIRONMENT                                  BACK

Here is a of what G.W. Bush has done to undermine three decades of hard work to make the Earth a better place for all people:



January 20, 2001 Sworn In as President

January 22, 2001 Reinstates the Global Gag Rule Against Family Planning

He got off to a fast start in 2001

January Dick Cheney creates secret energy task force.1

March 13 Reverses Pledge to Reduce CO2 Emissions

March 20 Delays Lowering Arsenic Levels in Drinking Water.2

March 23 Reverses Improved Hard Rock Mining Standards

March 26 Rescinds "Right to Know"Regarding Chemical Plants

March 28 Withdraws US from Kyoto Global Warming Treaty Process

April 9 Budget Cuts Funding for Renewable Energy Research

April 9 Calls for No Contraceptive Benefits for Federal Employees

April 9 Budget Cuts Funding for Wetlands Reserve Program

April 9 Budget to Fund Oil Exploration in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

April 9 Pushes to Eliminate Funding for Endangered Species Act Enforcement

April 12 Puts Dioxin Report on Hold

April 13 Rolls Back Efficiency Standards for Air Conditioners

May 4 Vows to Reassess Rules on Roads in National Forests

May 16 Calls for More Dirty Energy Production

June 6 Bush Global Warming Approach Rejected by National Academy of Sciences

November 2001 Bush named Patricia Funderbunk Ware, an ardent abstinence-only supporter, to head the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.


It was no better in 2002

January 2002
Bush’s Secretary of Health and Human Services designated “unborn children” as eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while refusing to provide health coverage to pregnant women.

February 2002
Bush announces his “Clear Skies” initiative to relax air quality rules established by the Clean Air Act in 1970. The Bush plan nearly doubles the allowed limit of nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and mercury in the air, and fails to address carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause of global warming.3

February 2002
In his proposed budget for 2003, Bush states that he will not seek reauthorization of corporate taxes to fund the Superfund waste cleanup program, transferring the majority of the costs of the dwindling program from industry to taxpayers. The administration also designates fewer toxic sites for cleanup.4

May 2002
At a U.N. Special Session on Children, the State Department allied with Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya to block consensus on sexuality education.

May 2002
The Bush administration slashes emission standards for air conditioners. According to the EPA, which argued against the change, the increase in annual electricity use that will result from the new regulation is equal to the amount of electricity used by 7.4 million households in a year.5

June 2002
Key health findings were altered on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institute for Health (NIH) websites. Specifically, new wording refutes volumes of evidence previously available on the site regarding findings that abortions do not increase breast cancer risks and condoms’ ability to protect against HIV . As well, findings that condom education does not increase sexual activity were expunged. Bush’s HHS Secretary has yet to fully explain these actions

July 2002
Despite his own State Department’s report which found no violations of the UNFPA program, Bush withheld $34 million in family planning aid pledged by Congress, Secretary of State Colin Powell, even the President himself .

July 2002
Although stating that the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was “generally desirable and should be approved”, the Bush administration changed course and attempted to block the Congressional vote on CEDAW.

August 2002
Bush again flip-flopped on funding, retracting an earlier move to provide $2.5 million in emergency funds for Afghan women; Bush’s backtracking also blocked the release of an additional $90 for Afghan women as well as $200 million for HIV/AIDS.

September 2002
Bush names Dr. Freda McKissic Bush to head the CDC’s Advisory Council on HIV and STD Prevention. Dr. Bush, director of an abstinence-only program, is also a member of an anti-condom research group.

October 2002
At the first U.N. population conference in Bangkok, Assistant Secretary of State Gene Dewey said that the U.S. “supports the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.”

October 2002
The Bush Administration extended federal protections to embryos—granting them the same protections as adults, children, and fetuses—by changing the mission of the Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections.

November 2002
Bush’s administration froze $3 million in funding to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) reproductive health program because they had researched the “morning after pill.”

December 2002
At the second U.N. population conference in Bangkok, the U.S. delegation moved to delete the terms “reproductive health services,” “reproductive rights,” and “sexual health and rights” from a resolution, while pushing abstinence. The U.S.’s objections were shot down by votes of 32-1 and 33-1.

December 2002
Bush nominated David Hager to head the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. As a physician, Hager preferred not to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women, advocated against the morning after pill, and advised that prayer and reading the Bible would relieve PMS symptoms (see page (f.g piece) for more information).


2003 got off to an inauspicious start

January 2003

Bush’s renominated judicial candidates Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen who were previously considered and rejected by the Senate (see May 2001).

January 2003
For the second year in a row, Bush declares the anniversary of Roe vs Wade “National Sanctity of Life Day”

January 2003
Bush’s 2003 budget proposal cuts $65 million from international family planning funds, does not include funds for UNFPA, and provides for a $33 million increase in funding for abstinence-only sex education programs

February 2003
The Bush administration reverses a phase-out of snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, despite the fact that a $2.4 million study carried out by its own National Parks Service found that prohibiting snowmobiles “best preserves the unique historic, cultural, and natural resources” in the parks.6

March 2003
The Bush administration guts a key section of the Clean Air Act, the New Source Review, which required industrial sites to install modern pollution controls when upgrading their facilities. The new rules will allow 17,000 industrial facilities to make major plant upgrades without installing pollution controls.7

August 2003
The EPA rules that carbon dioxide emissions are not pollutants, and therefore the agency does not have the authority to regulate them.

October 2003
The Bush administration scraps the limits on the amount of land that can be used for dumping mining waste, giving mining companies carte blanche to dump waste rock on as much public land as they want.8 December 2003 The Bush administration finalizes the opening of 300,000 acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, our nation’s only temperate rain forest, to loggers and other developers.8

November 2003
The Bush administration announces a new draft policy that will permit partially treated sewage to be blended with treated sewage and released into waterways during heavy rain, allowing viruses and parasites into the nation’s rivers, lakes, and coastal waters.9

By 2004 there seemed to be no stopping him.

January 2004
A Bush administration proposal to regulate mercury emissions lifts at least a dozen paragraphs, some verbatim, from memos prepared by an advocacy group and a law firm that represent major utilities and energy companies. Not surprisingly, the proposal weakens current standards established by the Clean Air Act.11

January 2004
Interior Secretary Gale Norton opens nearly nine million acres of wilderness area in Alaska’s North Slope to oil exploration and drilling. The land, which lies adjacent to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, holds only about six month’s worth of recoverable oil that will take at least 10 years to get to market.10

February 2004
Bush’s proposed budget for 2005 slashes funding for environmental programs by $1.9 billion, down 5.9 percent from 2004. Bush calls for significant cuts to EPA research, waste treatment programs, and the wetlands reserve program.11

July 2004
Secretary of Agriculture Ann Venemen scraps the Roadless Rule, instituted by President Clinton, which protected almost 60 million acres of national forest from road building, logging, and other development.

October 2004
The Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) reports that the number of civil lawsuits filed by the government against polluters during the first three years of the Bush administration dropped 75 percent compared to the last three years of the Clinton administration. Eric Schaeffer, head of the EIP, resigns from the EPA in protest of the administration’s lax environmental policies.12

November 2004
In 1987 the United States and 175 other countries agreed to end the manufacture and use of methyl bromide, a pesticide that depletes the ozone layer and causes cancer, by 2005. The Bush administration fought for and won a one-year exemption from the treaty and will allow methyl bromide production to increase in 2005. The administration filed for more exemptions to the treaty than all other nations combined.13

For 2005, he just ignores the public, good science, and environmental concerns and plows ahead.

January 2005
Christie Todd Whitman releases her new book, It’s My Party Too, in which she describes her participation in Dick Cheney’s energy task force as “an eyeopening encounter with just how obsessed so many of those in the energy industry, and in the Republican Party, have become with doing away with environmental regulation.”15

January 2005
Bush nominates Sam Bodman, who ran the Cabot Corporation between 1988 and 2000, to be his new Secretary of Energy. The Cabot Corporation has been one of Texas’ top five polluters for years.14

March 2005
The Senate votes in favor of opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The Washington Post says, Longtime Bush Goal for Alaskan Wildlife Refuge Closer to Reality. 16

For more complete information on what the Bush attack on Earth means to you and your children and their children come to the Population Connection Web site.


Footnotes
1 “Court Tosses Back Cheney Case.” Toni Locy, USA Today, June 25, 2004.
2 “Arsenic Drinking Water Standard Issued.” Edward Walsh, The Washington Post, November 1, 2001.
3 “President’s Initiative Will Work Against
Environment.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, editorial, February 19, 2002.
4 “Bush Proposing Policy Changes on Toxic Sites.” Katherine Q. Seelye, The New York Times, February 24, 2002.
5 ”Bush Team Eases Standards for Air-conditioner Energy Efficiency.” Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder News Service, May 23, 2002.
6 “Snowmobile Plan Defies Findings.” Julie Cart, The Los Angeles Times, January 31, 2003.
7 “Clean Politics.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, editorial, February 3, 2003.
8 “Limits on Mine-Waste Dumping Overturned.” The Houston Chronicle, October 11, 2003.
9 “EPA to Ease Sewage Treatment Rules.” Peter Eisler, USA Today, November 3, 2003.
10 “Alaska Oil Exploration Approved.” Eric Pianin, The Washington Post, January 23, 2004.
11 “Proposed Mercury Rules Bear Industry Mark.” Eric Pianin, The Washington Post, January 31, 2004.
12 “Group Says Bush Easy on Polluters.” Elizabeth Shogren, The Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2004.
13 “Protecting a Poison.” The Boston Globe, editorial, November 29, 2004.
14 “Bush’s Choice for Energy Secretary Was One of Texas’ Five Worst Polluters.” Jason Leopold, Common Dreams, January 16, 2005.
15 “Christie Whitman’s Forthcoming Book Assails GOP’s Rightward Lurch.” Amanda Griscom Little, Grist Magazine, January 14, 2005.
16 “51-49 Senate Vote Backs Arctic Oil Drilling.” Justin Blum, The Washington Post, March 17, 2005.