Pres Bush's Environmental Checklist

To Do:

Appoint anti-environmentalists as US EPA Director, Secretary of the Interior and Vice President
Renege on campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants
Abandon Kyoto Treaty on climate change
Reinstate the limit for arsenic in drinking water from 50 ppb to 10ppb. (pleasant surprise)
Reinstate global gag-rule on overseas family planning organizations
Let stand a regulation to cut diesel exhaust from trucks and buses by 95% (pleasant surprise)
Break campaign pledge to swap debt relief for protection of rainforests in developing countries
Propose a budget that cuts funding for renewable energy, conservation and fuel-efficiency programs and cuts funding of US EPA and Interior Dept
Back away from a commitment to protect Yellowstone and Grand Teton from the damage caused by snowmobiles.
Anounce repeal of Clinton administration's mining regulations.
Recommend easing Clean Air Act restrictions on industrial polluters
Drop sites from superfund list and shift cost from industry to taxpayers
Renege on a 2001 federal court settlement requiring more manatee protection in Florida.
Push Fast Track to extend NAFTA across western hemisphere and allow foreign corporations to sue U.S. govt over environmental protections they don't like.
Recommend NOT protectiong over one-half of the Tongass Nat'l Forest from extractive interests
Hold up a US. EPA rule that would help keep bacteria laden raw sewage discharges out of our streets, waterways, and basements, and make public reporting and notification of sewer overflows mandatory.
Push for massive new oil and gas leases along Alaska's coast, including adjacent to ANWR.
Issue major changes which relax the New Source Review rules of the Clean Air Act which originally required utility owners to install state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment when upgrading power plants and refineries--a lawsuit challenging the new rules was filed in Dec 2002 by a coalition of mid Atlantic and New England states.
Side with the mining industry in appealing a lower-court ruling that would have ended the practice of filling rivers and streams with waste rock and dirt from mountaintop mining operations and move to revamp a rule which restricts mining within 100 ft of a stream.
Propose restrictions on the scope of the Clean Water Act which could remove federal protection from 20 million acres of wetlands.
Strike down Roadless Area Conservation Rule
Allow commercial and extractive development on National Monument land
Drill for oil and gas off California coast
Drill for oil and gas in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

(Come on Ralph---do you really think Gore would have made up a list like this?)

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