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The environmental policies of George W. Bush will result in more death and destruction than anything else in history. It is almost as if they are trying to end life on earth. TVNL chronicles the crimes against the planet known as the George W. Bush environmental policy.
Cartoon by K. Bendib, all rights reserved.
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"The Bush White House is becoming the most environmentally hostile in history," - Deb Callahan, president of the League of Conservation Voters.
TVNL comment: The Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to protect the environment; just like the name says. It is not supposed to protect industry, as is is now doing.
Pollution kills 2 million people a year - Burning fossil fuels can lead to deadly air quality around world, WHO says - Reducing the kind of pollution known as PM10 — or particulate matter with particles of smaller than 10 micrometers — could save as many as 300,000 lives every year, according to a statement issued by the WHO's regional office in Manila. - TVNL COMMENT: Is Bush addressing this? Yes; George W. Bush is INCREASING the threat to your life!
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 Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us - Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war - Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years - Threat to the world is greater than terrorism - A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. - The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. - The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.- TVNL Comment: As we had said in the past: Click here
Pesticide exec to lead regional EPA office - She worked as an executive at Dow Chemical from 1996 to 2004, overseeing public affairs and the global pest-management and Asia Pacific operations, according to an EPA news release. Miller most recently served as president of the North American arm of Arysta LifeScience, a Tokyo-based pesticide maker. White House Says No Change on Carbon Strategy - The Bush administration has no plans to ease its opposition to national limits on greenhouse gas output despite talk that a change may be under consideration, a White House spokeswoman said on Thursday. Bush Policy Irks Judges in West - Using language that suggests they are fed up with the Bush administration, federal judges across the West have issued a flurry of rulings in recent weeks, chastising the government for repeated and sometimes willful failure to enforce laws protecting fish, forests, wildlife and clean air. LaWhite House Said to Bar Hurricane Report - The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday. Don't Ignore 'An Inconvenient Truth' - Polar bears are drowning, Eskimo villages are disappearing, hurricanes are intensifying -- and still, Bush turns a blind eye to the issue of global warming. Unions Say E.P.A. Bends to Political Pressure - Unions representing thousands of staff scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency say the agency is bending to political pressure and ignoring sound science in allowing a group of toxic chemicals to be used in agricultural pesticides. - As Governor of Texas Bush Launches War on Environment - Part I. He just loves war!
- As Governor of Texas Bush Launches War on Environment - Part II.
- As Governor of Texas Bush Launches War on Environment - Part III. The $$$ connection.
- Blatant Lie During Campaign
- Fuel Economy Hit 22-Year Low
- The End of Wilderness
- Military Seeks a Pass on Pollution
- Why Ecocide Is 'Good News' for the GOP
- Hydrogen's Dirty Secret
- Groups Blast Factory-Farm Proposal
- A Higher Power Informs the Republican Assault on the Environment
- Environmentalists = Terrorists - The New Math
- McInnis forest bill clears hurdle
EPA chief Whitman submits resignation letter - TVNL comments: The damage done to the environment and to environmental laws while Whitman was head of the EPA was unprecedented. This woman should be considered one of the all time worst enemies to the planet Earth. George Bush was shocked and confused when he heard this news. He had no idea that there was an Environmental Protection Agency!!! Friends of the Earth: Whitman Resignation Leaves Legacy of Polluted Water, Dirty Air and Unhealthy Communities Second Top EPA Official Resigns - Linda Fisher, the deputy administrator, had been seen as a possible successor to Whitman, who took over the agency after serving as New Jersey governor. Fisher told President Bush in her resignation letter that she plans to step down July 11. Enron indicted in wind farm fraud - TVNL Comments: Bush’s pals! How does anyone find good things to say about the current administration and all who are associated with them? TVNL would like some readers to share some of the positive actions of the Bush administration with us. We will start a section dedicated to the positive actions that go unreported, but we have not heard of any. Please contact us if you have some leads. Money Gone, U.S. Suspends Designations of Habitats - "It is outrageous that this administration is shortchanging funding for implementing the Endangered Species Act and not even bothering to request supplemental appropriation from Congress," said Representative Nick J. Rahall II, Democrat of West Virginia, who is on the subcommittee dealing with fish and wildlife. Three States Sue EPA Over Carbon Dioxide - Most industrial nations, with the exception of the United States, the world's largest polluter, have ratified an international treaty that would require signatories to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to pre-1990 levels by 2012 Environmental Groups Seek Special Counsel - Environmental and other advocacy groups asked the Justice Department on Tuesday to have a special prosecutor investigate the No. 2 official at the Interior Department, a former lobbyist, to determine if he violated conflict of interest laws or lied to Congress - - The groups also sued the Bush administration for withholding records about more than $1 million being paid to the official, J. Steven Griles, by his former lobbying firm over a four-year span Bush's War on Endangered Species - The Bush administration is steadily unshackling every restraint on the corporations that seek to plunder what is left of the public domain. Utility's Campaign Donations Under Fire - A Kansas utility contributed money to seven of the eight GOP candidates being given fund-raising help last year by the two key Republican House leaders on energy issues. How that happened, however, is in dispute. Bush team gets D- on protection of national parks - Advocacy group critical about smog, jobs, development - President Bush has often praised America’s national parks, but a report card out Wednesday by the largest parks advocacy group gave the administration a D- for what it called policies that undermine the nation’s natural jewels. Oil, gas industry gets two-year break from storm water permits - A Clinton administration regulation went into effect on Monday, expanding the storm water permitting program to construction sites that disturb 1 to 5 acres. - But the Environmental Protection Agency said it was postponing the requirements for oil and gas construction until March 2005 because it wants more time to evaluate the impacts on the industry. - TVNL comment: As we have said before, all the good that had been done by prior administrations has been undermined by the Bush administration. No where is the more pronounced than with environmental policy. Activists critical of water works - Aging pipes and outdated treatment plants threaten the nation’s drinking water systems, according to a review of 19 cities by a leading environmental group. A water utility association and the Environmental Protection Agency downplayed the report, saying it misrepresented the state of the nation’s water infrastructure. White House Makes Hefty Changes to E.P.A. Report - The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs. - Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. - TVNL comment: LIARS! They are decieving us about EVERY DAMN THING! This is like a Twilight Zone episode! US 'censored' green report - US environmental policies have caused worldwide anger The White House has removed sections of a report by the US Government's own environmental agency to water down references to global warming, say senior Democrats. - TVNL comment: Still no word of this on TV except for Bill O’Reilly. Bill actually spoke out against this! We have to give him gredit where credit is due! Memo exposes Bush's new green strategy - The US Republican party is changing tactics on the environment, avoiding "frightening" phrases such as global warming, after a confidential party memo warned that it is the domestic issue on which George Bush is most vulnerable. Save the world — remove a Bush, experts declare - Several speakers during the three-day conference entitled “Creative Ideas for a Threatened and Threatening World” criticized the Bush administration either directly or indirectly for its positions on environmental issues. Bush was targeted for doing everything from soft pedaling global climate change to bailing out of international family planning efforts. - “This is the most short-sighted administration there’s ever been,” - “First and foremost we’ve got a political problem,” he said. The conservative right wing of the Republican party has wrestled control of the country while Democrats and liberals play “too nice,” ASTHMA, RESPIRATORY DISEASE ON THE RISE; PRESIDENT'S ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY STINKS - There are flat-out lies of commission, glaring, deliberate omissions of relevant facts, elaborate distortions, exaggerations that contort the truth beyond recognition, and a Nixonian obsession with secrecy that covers up, not only the lies as they are committed, but is aimed at preventing future historians from seeking the truth. Democratic hopefuls rip Bush - Five call the president's environmental policies a disaster - "This has been the worst environmental president in our history," Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut told a partisan crowd at the University of California, Los Angeles. Clear Skies' mercury curb put in doubt - GOP seeks relaxation of pollution cap - President Bush's proposal for reducing mercury emissions from electric power plants was based on inaccurate estimates, a White House aide testified Thursday. The admission prompted some Republican senators to say the plan's cap on mercury pollution should be relaxed. - The news was greeted with enthusiasm by power company lobbyists. - TVNL comment: The GOP are a bunch immoral selfish elitists who value money over human decency and responsibility. EPA said to avoid studies conflicting with White House - In the last several months, the Environmental Protection Agency has delayed or refused to do analyses on proposals that conflict with the president's air pollution agenda, say members of Congress, their aides, environmental advocates and agency employees. - Agency employees say they have been told either not to analyze or not to release information about mercury, carbon dioxide and other air pollutants. This has prompted inquiries and complaints from environmental groups, as well as Democrats and Republicans in Congress. - TVNL comment: This administration should face the Texas jutical system; if you know what I mean!!! Administration to Exempt Forest From Road Act - The Bush administration set out a proposal yesterday to exempt the Tongass National Forest in Alaska from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, potentially helping to clear the way for 50 pending land sales in the forest. SENATOR EDWARDS CALLS FOR RESIGNATION OF EPA OFFICIAL - WASHINGTON-Senator John Edwards called Monday for the resignation of Jeffrey Holmstead, a top Environmental Protection Agency official who reportedly delayed scientific research on environmental proposals that conflict with President Bush's pollution agenda. EPA in Contempt for Destroying Files - ``The EPA destroyed vast databases that would have revealed the extent to which Carol Browner and other top officials worked with environmental groups to issue last-minute regulations prior to the end of the Clinton administration,'' he said. - TVNL question: Does this mean that the EPA worked WITH environmental groups in order to create environmental policy? Isn’t that a good thing? Am I missing something here? The EPA under the Bush/PNAC administration has worked with the violators of environmental law when deciding on policies! Bush, the rainforest and a gas pipeline to enrich his friends - President George Bush is seeking funds for a controversial project to drive gas pipelines from pristine rainforests in the Peruvian Amazon to the coast. - The plan will enrich some of Mr Bush's closest corporate campaign contributors while risking the destruction of rainforest, threatening its indigenous peoples and endangering rare species on the coast. Warming Trends - Ever since George Bush renounced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming two years ago, the industrialized world has been waiting patiently for signs that Americans are ready to focus on the pressing issue of climate change. Lately some American politicians have begun to take the matter more seriously, even if Mr. Bush has not. IG Investigates Whether EPA Misled Public on Water Quality - Agency Audits Suggest Reports Overstated Utilities' Record. - The Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general is investigating whether the agency is deliberately misleading the public by overstating the purity of the nation's drinking water, according to EPA officials and agency documents. - The inquiry was launched June 18, five days before then-EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman released the "Draft Report on the Environment," which stated that "94 percent of the population served by community water systems were served by systems that met all health-based standards." - More on Bush/PNAC and the environment here. World to warm by 8C, says thinktank - Tony Grayling, IPPR associate director, said: "The next international climate change negotiations must agree on a safe level of emissions in the long term and fair shares between nations ... Climate change policy should be based on sound science and social justice, not the horse trading that characterised the negotiations for the Kyoto protocol." Karl Rove's Water Policy - It's hardly news that Karl Rove, President Bush's political strategist, keeps a hawklike eye on domestic policies emerging from the executive branch, the better to make sure that everything meshes with his boss's political interests and those of the Republican Party. Yet rarely have Mr. Rove's efforts to bend policy to politics been more transparent than his intervention in a seemingly remote dispute involving water rights in Oregon's Klamath River basin. Bush Team Makes Federal Lands More Open to Oil, Gas Drilling - Oil industry representatives applauded the policy changes, which they say will streamline the bureaucracy involved in energy production on federal lands. - But environmental groups accused the Bush administration of sacrificing environmental quality in its effort to boost energy production in government-managed areas. Bush promotes forest-thinning initiative - Environmental groups say the Healthy Forests plan will make it easier for logging companies to cut down trees in national forests and will limit the public's input in forest management decisions. - The previous rules required environmental studies for nearly every logging project. Not Just a Walk in the Park for Bush - The president touts his environmental record, but a conservation group and former park workers say image trumps substance.- Critics of his environmental policies said Friday he has reneged on a promise to adequately fund the thousands of pressing maintenance projects at national parks. EPA Nominee's Balancing Act Has Its Critics - Utah Gov. Leavitt has had success achieving consensus on land-use issues, but harbors a pro-development bias, environmentalists say. - Leavitt, they say, approached these controversies with a clear bias toward development and resource extraction. And he often sought resolutions in closed-door meetings. Maybe environmentalists had a point - Imagine: solar panels on factory roofs, windmills around the parking lots. Renewable energy could fill a portion of the plant's electricity needs. Bush rejects razing dams to make way for salmon. - President George W. Bush waded deeper into controversy over his environmental policies in the Pacific Northwest on Friday as he rejected calls for hydroelectric dams to be razed to make way for endangered migrating salmon. Bush's pollution charter - Republican supporting energy firms set to escape controls on emissions - Critics of draft regulations due to be unveiled by the US environmental protection agency next week say they amount to a death knell for the Clean Air Act, the centrepiece of US regulation. Reps Push for Federal Inquiry Into EPA Cover-Up - The report, published by the agency's Inspector General, concludes the White House influenced the EPA to downplay concerns about air contaminants in the days immediately following the World Trade Center disaster. Ex-Park Service Workers Say Bush Reneges on Promises - "We are seeing evidence at every turn that when private for-profit interests vie with resources of the park, the private interests, and not principle, governs." - "In the minds of many of us, this is probably the most dismal birthday that the National Park Service has ever had," said Wade, who retired from the park service in 1997 after 34 years. Bush vs. the American Landscape - By ROBERT REDFORD - It didn't help that as he presented an energy plan — developed with help from lobbyists for oil, coal, gas, mining and nuclear power — the president buttoned up his speech by asking all of us to stop bickering, to set a new tone and listen to each other. Since Vice President Dick Cheney refused even to meet with environmental groups, it seems a rather curious, if not disingenuous, request. US says CO2 is not a pollutant - The Bush administration has decreed that carbon dioxide from industrial emissions - the main cause of global warming - is not a pollutant.- It is also part of a pattern of casting doubt on scientific evidence, going back to the US's rejection of the Kyoto Protocols in 2001. Earlier this year, the Bush administration excised a 28-page section on climate change from an EPA report. It also ignored a report by the US Academy of Sciences that argued that the evidence of climate change could not be ignored.- "Saying that carbon dioxide does not cause global warming is like refusing to say smoking causes lung cancer," Bush EPA a true-life horror tale - In the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency is working overtime to scuttle the Clean Air Act. In effect, trashing the environment. Bush Policy Sparks `Revolt' By Ex-Park Officers - Finley and dozens of other career park service leaders are so concerned about the effect White House policy is having on national parks that they sent a letter to the president accusing him of doing ``irreparable damage to America's national parks.'' - Kennedy says the letter represents a ``revolt and protest from professionals that hasn't happened in the last 80 years.'' Not just warmer: it's the hottest for 2,000 years - Widest study yet backs fears over carbon dioxide - Confirming the worst fears of environmental scientists, the newly published findings are a blow to sceptics who maintain that global warming is part of the natural climatic cycle rather than a consequence of human industrial activity. EPA lifts ban on selling PCB sites - The Bush administration has ended a 25-year-old ban on the sale of land polluted with PCBs. The ban was intended to prevent hundreds of polluted sites from being redeveloped in ways that spread the toxin or raise public health risks. What was known about post-9/11 air - Inspector general says White House changed EPA statements about safety at Ground Zero - CHANGED PRESS RELEASES : So what happened? Tinsley’s report charges, in the crucial days after 9/11, the White House changed EPA press releases to “add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.” Sept. 13: The EPA draft release — never released to the public — said: EPA “testing terrorized sites for environmental hazards.” The White House changed that to EPA “reassures public about environmental hazards.” Sept. 16: The EPA draft said: “Recent samples of dust ... on Water Street show higher levels of asbestos.” - The White House version: “New samples confirm ... ambient air quality meets OSHA [government] standards” ... and “is not a cause for public concern.” - And the White House left out entirely the warning “that air samples raise concerns for cleanup workers and office workers near Water St.” - TVNL Comment: The “workers” that they are speaking of are the same workers that Bush used for a photo op! Sen. Clinton to Block Bush's EPA Nominee - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday she planned to block President Bush's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency over an internal report saying the EPA misled New Yorkers about health risks after the World Trade Center attack. Greenpeace obtains smoking-gun memo: White House/Exxon link - Conservative front group may have thanked White House for help in suing EPA - Did conservative elements in the White House provoke an Exxon front group to sue EPA to suppress a report on climate change? That's the question that two State Attorney Generals have asked US Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate, after Greenpeace uncovered a routine email in a Freedom of Information Act request. Bill exempts disputed drilling process - Despite water-pollution fears, technique would not be regulated by feds - Tucked inside an 800-page energy bill winding its way through Congress is a short section that would exempt from federal regulation a lucrative gas-drilling process perfected by the energy company Vice President Dick Cheney once ran. - The exemption, while it likely wouldn't benefit Cheney financially, is testament to the support that the oil and gas industry enjoys in the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress. - Environmentalists say that could put drinking water at risk, and they want federal officials to have regulatory power to prevent problems and step in if water is contaminated. Alabama residents say the technique, called hydraulic fracturing, fouled drinking-water wells and unleashed a stench in homes. EPA Study Recommends Tightening Clinton-Era Airborne Soot Standards - The findings could become the basis for additional pollution-control requirements to reduce the amount of microscopic soot emitted by diesel-burning trucks, cars, factories and power plants. - Such a step would put the Bush administration at odds with business groups. They have argued the current federal soot-control standards, issued by the Clinton administration, are based on uncertain science and have cost industry tens of billions of dollars. Bush steps up fight against European safety testing - President George Bush is mounting an intensive campaign to force European countries to drop safety tests expected to save thousands of lives each year - The documents - which include diplomatic cables signed by the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell - show that the Bush administration has threatened Europe with trade sanctions if it goes ahead with the tests, which are designed to protect workers and the public from highly toxic chemicals. - The tests are designed to identify the most dangerous chemicals threatening Europeans, including cancer-causing and "gender-bender" substances, so that they can be controlled. Bush covers up climate research - White House officials play down its own scientists' evidence of global warming - White House officials have undermined their own government scientists' research into climate change to play down the impact of global warming - Central to the revelations of double dealing is the discovery of an email sent to Phil Cooney, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, by Myron Ebell, a director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI is an ultra-conservative lobby group that has received more than $1 million in donations since 1998 from the oil giant Exxon, which sells Esso petrol in Britain. - The email discusses possible tactics for playing down the report and getting rid of EPA officials, including its then head, Christine Whitman. 'It seems to me that the folks at the EPA are the obvious fall guys and we would only hope that the fall guy (or gal) should be as high up as possible,' Ebell wrote in the email. 'Perhaps tomorrow we will call for Whitman to be fired,' he added. Republicans Set to Spell Out Plan for Oil Drilling in Refuge - Republican authors of the emerging energy bill will formally propose opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling as they begin to reveal the more contentious elements of the legislation this week, Congressional officials say. U.S. energy bill skips raising fuel standards - Environmental groups argue that stronger mileage requirements are the only way to significantly reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. - However, Republicans and some automakers say that a large boost in fuel economy may make vehicles less safe because they would be smaller and built from lighter-weight materials, and could result in thousands of lost autoworker jobs. - More on Bush/PNAC and the environment here. Thinning Ice - There could be a bright side to all this, if it persuaded the Bush administration and Congress to take the issue of climate change more seriously. That is not happening. Mr. Bush remains fixated on a voluntary approach that offers little hope of meaningful reductions in industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. 160,000 Said Dying Yearly from Global Warming - MOSCOW (Reuters) - About 160,000 people die every year from side-effects of global warming ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020, a group of scientists said on Tuesday. - TVNL Comment: This figure represents only Russia. Critical US energy bill crafted in secrecy. - What's known so far is that if the bill becomes law it would bring about several important changes. It would seek to: - • Open protected federal lands to exploration and drilling. • Revive the nuclear power industry. • Inventory offshore drilling sites from Florida to California. • Open huge natural-gas reserves on Alaska's North Slope States Plan Suit to Prod U.S. on Global Warming - California plans to sue the Environmental Protection Agency over the Bush administration's recent decision that the agency lacked the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes and other sources, state regulators said on Friday. - Nine other states, including New York, Massachusetts and Oregon, as well as environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, are expected to join the suit. The legal strategy, an effort to prod federal action on global warming, sets up a battle between the Bush administration and the states over policy on climate change. N.H. Sues 22 Major Oil Companies - The state sued 22 major oil companies Monday because of the gasoline additive MTBE, which has been found to pollute water, Gov. Craig Benson said. - The lawsuit claims that the oil companies have added increasing amounts of the additive to gasoline, even though they knew years ago it would contaminate water supplies. - “New Hampshire's groundwater and surface waters are under attack,” Attorney General Peter Heed said at a news conference with Benson. U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species - The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries. Primate expert blasts Bush - WHITE HOUSE POLICY BAD FOR APES, SHE SAYS - The biggest threat to chimpanzees, the African apes that are the closest relative of the human species, may be hunters seeking bush meat, renowned primatologist Jane Goodall told a Silicon Valley audience Saturday. But in the past three years, she said, another threat to endangered animals around the world has emerged -- the Bush administration. - ``What the Bush administration has done over the past three years to overturn environmental laws is unbelievable. It's shameful. We must not sit still and do nothing,'' she said. 2 Studies Contradict EPA on New Rules - Changes to Boost Pollution, They Say - Environmental Protection Agency rule changes could lead to almost 1.4 million tons more air pollution in 12 states and jeopardize Clinton-era lawsuits against power plants, two studies concluded yesterday, contradicting Bush administration claims. Road to ruin - America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the planet US states file lawsuit over greenhouse emissions - A dozen US states challenged the Bush administration's environmental policy on Thursday by filing a lawsuit in a federal appeals court over greenhouse gas emissions. - The suit, which was joined by several environmental groups, represents an appeal against the Environmental Protection Agency's August decision that it was not responsible for regulating emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, linked to global warming. Report Says E.P.A. Aide Knew Rule Change Could Hurt Lawsuits - Congressional investigators have determined that a top Bush administration air-quality regulator was warned that administration proposals to revise federal clean-air regulations could harm government lawsuits to force power plants and refineries to make upgrades that would sharply reduce the pollution they produce. - The senators contend that the administration official, Jeffrey R. Holmstead, the assistant E.P.A. administrator for air and radiation, may not have been honest with them in testimony before Congress last year.- Appearing before a Senate committee in July 2002, Mr. Holmstead testified, "We do not believe these changes will have a negative impact on the enforcement cases." Big melt warning for Arctic - The ice covering the Arctic ocean is getting thinner as summers lengthen, say British scientists. - Melting will also increase the effects of global warming in the northern hemisphere, say researchers from University College London (UCL) and the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research. Senate rejects global warming cap - Bill challenged President Bush; sponsors vow to continue - In the Senate’s first vote in more than six years on the controversial issue of climate change, lawmakers on Thursday rejected a plan to curb carbon dioxide emissions from industrial smokestacks. - Their bill would have required industrial plants — but not motor vehicles — to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The Bush administration said the bill would seriously harm the economy. EPA to OK Sewage Treatment Exemptions` - The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday it will formalize a policy allowing sewage treatment plants to skip a process for killing some pathogens after heavy rains or snow melts. - Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore said two years ago that more than half the waterborne disease outbreaks in the U.S. during the last half-century followed a period of extreme rainfall. Rule Drafted That Would Dilute the Clean Water Act - Bush administration officials have drafted a rule that would significantly narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act, stripping many wetlands and streams of federal pollution controls and making them available to being filled for commercial development. Impasse On Ozone Curbs - The U.S. delegation was defending a request not only to be exempted from phasing out the insecticide methyl bromide but also to seek permission to increase production of the known carcinogen by nearly 30 percent. - Under the protocol, wealthy nations are required to cut production of methyl bromide by 70 percent in 2003 and eliminate it completely by 2005. - If the exemption is approved by the meeting, the United States would produce 9,777 tons of methyl bromide in 2005. - TVNL Asks: How is increasing the production of a known cancer causing chemical not terrorism? Global Warming May Spur More Wildfires - Drought- and beetle-ravaged trees in this mountain community stick up like matchsticks in the San Bernardino National Forest, bypassed by the fires still smoldering, but left like kindling for the next big blaze. - Warmer, windier weather and longer, drier summers would mean higher firefighting costs and greater loss of lives and property, according to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Forest Service. GOP Seeking to Delay Environmental Bills - Senators Say They Are Balancing Industry Needs; Critics Worry About Air Quality - Republican lawmakers are mounting their strongest bid since regaining control of the Senate in January to overturn or postpone an array of environmental provisions. - Sen. James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.), a champion of environmental causes, was replaced by Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who recently dismissed warnings about global warming as "a hoax." But some critics say the GOP is going too far in removing what they consider vital public-health safeguards. Park Workers 'Openly' Opposing Bush Policies - Tension between the administration and government agencies grows as two employees in disguise criticize environmental stances. - For the first few months of the Bush administration, if career employees at the agencies charged with protecting the environment disagreed with the new president's agenda, they expressed their concerns primarily among themselves — or sometimes, demanding anonymity, to reporters. - Then several left their government jobs and started openly criticizing the administration, calling it hostile to wilderness, wildlife and clean air. Others stayed — but tried to sabotage, or at least expose, administration initiatives by leaking documents to the media. Shrinking ice in Antarctic sea 'exposes global warming' - Frozen oceans that affect currents such as the Gulf Stream have decreased dramatically, say scientists - The change is important because sea ice - the area around the poles where seawater is frozen into layers no more than a few metres thick - is regarded as a crucial indicator of climate change. U.S. Fails to Gain Exemption on Ozone-Harming Chemical - Negotiators from the European Union and poor countries refused on Friday to exempt the United States from a requirement to phase out chemicals that destroy the ozone layer. - The American delegation had requested an exemption from the requirement that developed countries phase out by 2005 the use of methyl bromide, a fumigant used to control insects, nematodes, weeds and pathogens. The United States asked for permission to increase production of the chemical from the reduced level it had already achieved. 14 States File Suit in Attempt to Block New E.P.A. Rules - A coalition of 14 states plus the District of Columbia filed papers in federal court today in an effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from introducing a new rule that the states say will seriously weaken the provisions of the Clean Air Act and send more pollution into the atmosphere. ‘A Stealth Attack’ - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams the Bush administration’s environmental policies - In a Rolling Stone magazine piece called “Crimes Against Nature,” scheduled to hit newsstands Nov. 21, conservationist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. argues that since taking office, President George W. Bush has gone to unprecedented lengths to undo 30 years of environmental law. EPA Plan Would Ease Rules on Nuke Waste - The Bush administration is considering allowing low-level radioactive waste to be dumped at toxic waste sites and other facilities that currently aren't permitted to receive it. - TVNL Asks: Is this protecting us from terror? New View of Data Supports Human Link to Global Warming - One of the last gaps in the evidence pointing to a human cause for global warming appears to be closing. - The result is more consensus than ever that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases are noticeably altering climate. House, Senate Reach Deal on Forestry Bill - The bill aims to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfires by speeding approval of projects to remove small and diseased trees and brush in overgrown forests, and limiting appeals and environmental reviews. Dry underbrush and dead trees have turned some Western forests into tinderboxes, lawmakers said. - Environmentalists, though, described the bill as a giveaway to the timber industry because it limits public participation and leaves old-growth and remote, roadless areas of the forest at risk of logging. Global Warming Gas Seen Increasing Dramatically - Worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide, considered a culprit in global warming, are expected to increase by 3.5 billion tonnes, or 50 percent, annually by the year 2020, an executive for ExxonMobil Corp said on Wednesday. - At the same time, global demand for energy will rise by 40 percent as the world population increases and economies grow, said Randy Broiles, global planning manager for Exxon's oil and gas production unit. - TVNL Translation: If we continue to allow oil men to run our nation we will end life on this planet very soon.  Crimes Against Nature - Bush is sabotaging the laws that have protected America's environment for more than thirty years - By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - George W. Bush will go down in history as America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year. Under the guidance of Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the Bush White House has actively hidden its anti-environmental program behind deceptive rhetoric, telegenic spokespeople, secrecy and the intimidation of scientists and bureaucratsOzone layer 'sacrificed' to lift re-election prospects - President George Bush has brought the international treaty aimed at repairing the Earth's vital ozone layer close to breakdown, risking millions of cancers, to benefit strawberry and tomato growers in the electorally critical state of Florida, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. - His administration is insisting on a sharp increase in spraying of the most dangerous ozone-destroying chemical still in use, the pesticide methyl bromide, even though it is due to be phased out under the Montreal Protocol in little more than a year. And it has threatened that the United States could withdraw from the treaty's provisions altogether if its demand is not met. States Feud Over Air Pollution Rules - A legal war between the states erupted Wednesday over the federal government's attempt to relax air pollution regulations. - Nine states are taking on 14 states that want to block new federal rules relaxing pollution requirements for power plants, refineries and manufacturers. The battle falls along partisan lines. - TVNL Comment: Say whatever you want, but it is immoral and disgraceful that Republicans are actually fighting for the right to pollute the air more! Anyone who feels that it is OK to pollute the very air that we breath for business purposes should be ashamed of him/herself! This is what the Republican Party represents to the world. Money and greed and power are all they fight for. Changes in Water Policy Opposed - Just more than half of the members of the House of Representatives on Tuesday urged President Bush to drop regulatory changes that could reduce the n |
