Interesting article on the environment in the GOP in the Times this morning:
As Christie Whitman, the most prominent suburban woman in the Bush administration, steps down at E.P.A., the coverage primarily concerns the issues on which she was overruled. This ignores some of her significant achievements
Beatniksalad
Well, anyone who cares about the environment will always remember Bush for not signing the Kyoto treaty, hence making the whole effort to recognise and reduce global warming pretty much meaningless…
Louis
An intersting article at techcentralstation, Who Killed Kyoto? Try France.
http://www.techcentralstation.be/2051/wrapper.jsp?PID=2051-100&CID=2051-052003M
Dean Esmay
So, Kyoto is the defining issue for “environmentalists” today, is it?
In other words, nothing else matters, if you didn’t support Kyoto?
So why is it that in their entire 8 years in office, the Clinton administration never submitted the Kyoto treaty to the Senate for ratification?
Could it be because 97 members of the Senate, including virtually all the Democrats, voted for Democrat Robert Byrd’s “sense of the Senate resolution” which expressed strong condemenation of the Kyoto treaty?
There was a very good piece in The New Republic in early 2001 showing how the Bush record on the environment was really quite excellent and would have received laudatory praise had it been a Democratic administration. Of course, that was two years ago, and I don’t know if there’s been an update since then.
John Yuda
My girlfriend works for the EPA, and the overly short version is that, basically, this administration has continued some policies and done some new things that are worthwhile, but also weakened some other regulations.
Ultimately, nothing the EPA does ever satisfies environmentalists, because environmentalists have a very all-or-nothing mentality, while the EPA tries to weight environmental, economic, and other issues and find the best middle ground. That middle ground may move around over time and vary by administration, of course.
A mantra inside the EPA is that they know they’ve gotten close to “right” when everybody – environmentalists and strict free-market folks alike – is angry with them.
David Perron
Ditto what Dean said, only my memory says it was 95-0. Still, Kyoto was stuffed by the Senate before Bush was a gleam in the eye of the GOP. And Bush is supposed to defy the will of the American people?
Kyoto never, ever made sense. Clinton had no business signing it.
Beatniksalad
Thanks for that info Dean, I didn’t know about a lot of that stuff. Will check it out.