President George W. Bush has angered environmentalists at home and political leaders abroad by making it clear that meeting soaring US energy demands is a priority.
"Bush is attacking the environment by land, water and air," Sierra Club director Carl Pope said bluntly, citing 16 measures by the Bush administration -- on carbon dioxide emissions, water quality, mining and forest use -- to prove his point.
The Republican president has made it clear he will protect the US economy and its workers before protecting US land and natural resources.
"We have an energy crisis ... That's why I have decided not to have mandatory caps on CO2," Bush said to explain his refusal to impose limits on carbon dioxide emissions from US power plants, a reversal of a campaign promise.
"We'll be working with our allies to reduce greenhouse gases, but I will not accept a plan that will harm our economy and hurt American workers," he said, justifying his rejection of the 1997 UN Kyoto protocol on climate change, which his predecessor in the White House Bill Clinton signed in 1998.
But to Europe and Japan, the decision shows Washington simply does what it wants and ignores the impact on others.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, visiting Washington last week, could only ask Bush to let other countries who signed the Kyoto protocol take measures to limit the effects of greenhouse gases, which many scientists believe have eaten a dangerous hole in the protective ozone layer of earth's atmosphere.
US environmentalists -- who voted for Democrat Al Gore or the Green Party's Ralph Nader -- are seething and starting to mobilize. "One has to remind Mr Bush that he is not in Texas anymore... these are irresponsible acts of brinkmanship... they will be very, very costly to him" politically, said Mark Herstgaard of Earth Odyssey.
"We are dismayed. We feel he's irresponsible ... corporations have paid millions of dollars putting Bush into the White House, now they are getting payback," said Alex Veitch of the Sierra Club.
Among the most egregious actions taken by Bush, they say, include his decisions to scrap measures signed by former president Bill Clinton in his last weeks in office, regulating the level of arsenic in drinking water, cleaning up mining sites, and slowing road-construction in national forests -- saying they were too costly.
In his resolute abandonment of a campaign vow to seek limits on carbon dioxide emissions, he clearly took his top environmental officer Christine Todd Whitman by surprise and could undermine her credibility in international forums such as the one she attended in early March in Italy.
Some more conservative environmentalists refuse to pass judgment on the three-month-old administration, saying it is too soon to do so, though they admit the environment could be an Achilles' heel for the Republican president.
Author and environmentalist Gregg Easterbrook pointed out contradictions inherent in US society, where consumers demand both clean air and big gas-guzzling vehicles. "The Americans are in favour of environment protection ... but they want unregulated gasoline and SUVs," he said. Others see alternatives to simply feeding the ravenous appetite of US consumers.
"We suggest energy efficiency" -- especially in cars --"and serious research and development into renewable energies, wind and solar," said Veitch.—AFP.
©--Agence France Presse 2001.
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
