Goodbye to the World’s Biggest Polluter
Mon Jul 14, 2008 at 12:04:26 PM PDT
Before even leaving office, the Bush administration record and legacy is clear. It will go down in history as one of the most inept administrations in the history of the United States.
The list of failures and abuses is mind boggling: the reckless rush to an unnecessary war against Iraq, the bumbling, tragic consequences surrounding the response to Hurricane Katrina and an energy policy that has set back both the environment and our economy.
Perhaps the greatest calamity and scandal is the policy failure to deal with the energy crisis and threat of global warming.
Candidate George Bush famously declared that he would regulate CO2 emissions. Yet for the next eight years, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their assorted cronies and henchmen enacted an energy policy that ignored the realities of global warming and the necessity of reducing carbon emissions.
We can no longer continue to waste more fossil fuel than any other nation on earth and hope to salvage our economy, much less the planet, from the disastrous consequences of global warming. Nor can we do as President Bush suggested today and open our coastlines to offshore drilling. This won’t solve the energy crisis. Nor will it curb America’s oil addictions or reduce our carbon emissions.
We need new to address the energy crisis and immediately lower gas prices. This means investing in alternative energy and opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is 97% full. This does not mean opening our coastlines, which won’t reduce the cost of gas. We already have 68 million acres available for drilling. It also doesn’t mean avoiding our responsibility to regulate emissions, as the Republicans are doing.
This weekend, we read the final chapter in this shameful story: the Bush administration has decided to run out the clock on global warming. Despite the Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts vs. EPA that this administration must deal with carbon dioxide emissions, the EPA will not take any action to regulate greenhouse gases. This is despite the EPA’s scientists saying greenhouse gas regulation is necessary to the health of humans and the planet.
The report by Sir Nicholas Stern makes clear that the costs of these eight lost years will be far more significant than any modest costs aggressively battling global warming.
George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Administrator Johnson have done significant damage to the EPA and the professionals who work there. Sadly, it will be our children, grandchildren, and vulnerable people around the world who will be paying the price for this malfeasance. So, in the words of George Bush as he departed last week’s G8, I say "goodbye" to the "world’s biggest polluter."
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