New Book by Noted Journalist Skewers Bush on Environment

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> Thu, 12 Aug 2004 13:12:08 GMT

> " BushGreenwatch " <info

 

> New Book by Noted Journalist Skewers Bush

> on Environment

>

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> 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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