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Environmental News Since George Bush Won His Second Term.

I recently read "Crimes against nature by Robert F Kennedy Jr." I recommend you do to. I personally went on line to verify what he said & though I didn't check out everything, what I did proved to be true. I have no reason to doubt any of it.

A lot of things he said, I already knew but there was a lot I didn't know & he tied it all together in a very interesting way.

One of the first things he (George Bush) did, & it made me anxious at the time, was appoint Christy Whitman (The worst environmental Governor in New Jersey's history) to head the E.P.A. I shouldn't have been surprised. While he was the Governor of Texas it ranked first in toxic releases to the environment, total toxic air emissions from industrial facilities, in toxic chemical accidents, and first in cancer-causing pollution. During that same period of time it had 15 of the nations 30 highest smog readings & ranked number one in the country in both air & water pollution. Houston overtook Los Angeles as America's Smoggiest city. In Texas, during that time, every major urban area (Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso & Longview.) failed to meet the EPA's minimum air quality standards.

Christy Whitman was replaced by the Present Head of the EPA, Mike Leavitt. Under Governor Leavitt, water quality monitoring in Utah was well behind the national average for testing streams and rivers . The vast majority of Utah waters are not even monitored, according to EPA's most recent state water quality report.  Read his environmental record Here

Let me ask you a question. Would you hire an alcoholic to tend bar at your restaurant, a convicted felon to work your cash register, or a known pedophile to baby sit your children? No! then why do you allow a president to appoint lobbyists & CEOs from major polluting industries to protect our environment.

Is George Bush deceitful? I recently watched him on T. V., at the dedication of a wetland preservation area, make a statement that his administration had increased the nations protected wetlands, what he didn't say was that any wet land that was only a wetland during part of the year was exempted from the program i.e. tidal marshes etc. thus cutting the national wetlands program by about a third.

He uses the term (Healthy Forest initiative) to describe clear cutting of old-growth forests & makes it a point to let us know that by thinning the forests we can cut down on forest fires or at least make them easier to control. Let me point out that old, & therefore taller trees, block the sunlight from reaching the forest floor making it harder for new growth. Have you ever walked in an old forest, if you have you'll know that it's easier to get around in, then a younger forest, there is simple less undergrowth & undergrowth is kindling. Then take into account the roads needed to enter the forests & the loss of the trees make erosion a major problem, sometimes causing massive landslides, flash flooding etc.

You also have to remember that the dead trees, The ones that burn the fastest aren't good for lumber, It's the healthy trees that they harvest. I may be wrong but I don't think they bother to clear the dead trees. So how much fire protection do they afford us. We still have the dry dead trees, & since they've cleared the tall, sun blocking, trees we have more undergrowth. These are the things that burn the hottest & fastest.

Let me ask you a question. Most of us have built a campfire, or started a fire in a fireplace. do you hold a match or flame to a log, or do you put kindling under the log? Small twigs & maybe dead leaves. Do you use live twigs or do you look for dead dry ones?

O.K. you could stop the threat of forest fires by clear cutting (Cutting all of the trees in an area.) but then you would greatly increase the chances of mudslides or avalanches. Plus you'd ruin the beauty of the area & destroy the habitat.

He talks of "reforming" or "streamlining" EPA regulations when he means "weakening" or "eliminating" them.

There is no such thing as Global Warming. George Bush proved this when he pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol. Oh! another Flip Flop, although he had said he opposed the Protocol he said he would tackle the problem of C02 omissions. CO2 is the number one cause of the greenhouse effect. He has since stated that it would be to costly to implement any change in laws affecting C02.

9/04/04 I recently heard that George Bush now agrees, after a new report came out, that industry helps increase Global Warming. I thought he said there wasn't Global Warming? (Flip Flop)

I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but I've heard that a large portion of the Antarctic ice shelf recently broke free & that the British are planning to move their Station because they don't believe it will be safe from the receding ice shelf. The permafrost is softening (Areas where you could once land a small plane are, now because of the softer ground, unusable.  The glaciers are disappearing. The snow pack is shrinking in mountain ranges around the world: The Alps, Andes, Himalayas, and for people in our western states, Check your section of the Rockies. Coral Reefs around the world are dieing, because of warmer water temperatures, & the rate of skin cancer is also on the rise, though that's because of the Ozone layer & doesn't effect global warming but don't tell me that global warming doesn't exist. Still The administration does nothing. Oh! I'm sorry they do, they do an investigation & if the first one doesn't agree with them then they do another one & so on & so on, but it would be expensive for the large companies that support the administration to comply with any new regulations that might help.

Let's look at our waters. 1/5 of the lakes in New York's Adirondacks are dead. Frogs around the country are being born with extra limbs and other defects. Forty of the fifty states, now post warnings on eating fish caught in their waters & this goes for offshore fish. Pregnant women & children are told not to eat tuna & the rest of us are warned to only eat fish once or twice a week. The mercury & arsenic levels are to high for safe consumption. Most other fish are also affected. Read the EPA's warning on eating fish Here on the right side of their web page you'll find a map of the U. S. then you can click on your state to find out it's seafood warnings. You'll find that most of the states have warnings. Just for fun try Texas.

I live near the Delaware River by Trenton N. J. & in recent years we've seen fish in the river we hadn't seen in years. The shad have again started to run as have the Atlantic herring. People have even caught Stripped Bass as far north as the end of the tidal waters at Trenton, but that won't last. The EPA passed the clean water act a few years back & that's why the fishing has been so good & let's face it what is good for the health of the fish is also good for the health of humans. That's all going to change, under Whitman & the new EPA, they have already weakened most of the regulations, claiming that they need to do more studies, then setting aside the regulations until the new studies are finished. Shouldn't they at the very least err on the side of caution & change the laws only after the tests prove they're not necessary.

This administration has set the conservation movement back fifty years. Our kids are the one who will pay.

Afterthought: What if we had cleaner air & water, wouldn't we save money in the area of health care costs. I mean less asthma etc. Seafood would also be cheaper & since there would be more fish in the sea, the fishing industry would do better. How many fishermen have had to give up or mortgage their boats, many have even stopped fishing altogether. Wouldn't one of the beneficiaries be the economy.

Bulletin: 8/5/04 From the Trenton Times: Washington (AP) There was a 51 percent increase in beach closings & advisories in 2003. The most in 14 years of monitoring beach water quality.

Of the 188 beach closings last year 48 % were due to elevated bacterial levels.

Have we forgotten the lessons of Love Canal. We have in the past three and a half years past many laws exempting corporations from compliance with environmental regulations. In a lot of these cases we have put the corporations in charge of their own pollution (Voluntary compliance). This is like having the fox guard the hen house.

While were at it, did you know that the EPA under White House influence mislead the public on the environmental dangers of working on the site of 9/11 if you didn't read this.

For the religious right. Do you really believe that God created the earth for a privileged few or do you believe that he made it for all of mankind. If you believe the latter then how can you support a party that rapes the earth for their own benefit. God must cry when he looks down and sees what's happening to one of his greatest works. As for the other things they promise you. How many have they actually accomplished? Not many.

Throughout history politicians have used religion for their own benefit. England formed an alliance with the church when it wanted to steal land during the Crusades. The people wouldn't fight a war for land or material gains that would only benefit the royal family so they (The Royal family.) along with the Church of England made it a holy war, a war to regain the holy lands & people fell all over themselves to fight for the glory that was God. Do you think, in retrospect, the crown really cared about the religious aspects of the war they were fighting? If they did then why did they plunder the holy sites they captured?

The same holds true with the Conquistadors and their pillaging of the Aztec & Mayan Indians. How many Indians died in the name God? Who really gained? The Church & the Spanish crown. There are many more examples.

Today, Large corporations are doing the same thing. They are willing, because of their greed, to use religion. They give large amounts of money to political interests, some who know what they are up to & some who are naive, in order to buy legislature that will allow them to maximize their profits. In order to get their candidates elected, they create religious discord among the voters. Believe me they could care less about school prayer, gay marriage, etc. What is important to them is the almighty dollar.

Let's not let this administration lead us down the road to the destruction of our natural habitat. Mother Earth needs our help, the birds need our help, butterflies need our help & God needs our help. Let's stand up for the environment.

Wasn't it George Bush that said "Trees cause pollution."

For some really scary information on Global Warming read the September issue of the National Geographic Society Magazine. We all know & most of us I'm sure, trust the research that goes into this publication. Buy it, borrow it from a friend or get it a your local library but read it. The results of the research may not affect you but if you have children or especially grandchildren, it will affect them.

The Superfund is bankrupt. the federal program to clean up toxic waste sites, like Love Canal, has been badly hurt by congress's refusal to reinstate the corporate taxes that funded it. To some of you who don't live near a waste site it may not seem important, but you better start to realize that even though the sites aren't in your vicinity your water may still be affected by the run off into streams, then rivers & may eventually reach you.& that includes the under ground aquifers.

It appears that the main concept, of making the polluters clean up their own mess, has been largely ignored. You probable wouldn't hire a maid to clean up your child's room, So why should we hire someone to clean up after the polluters? That is their job. In some cases the companies went out of business or went bankrupt so congress started a orphan fund. This is the fund that congress allowed to die by not renewing the excise taxes on large polluters & the oil & chemical companies. Without these taxes many of the worse toxic sites in the country will remain the same for maybe years to come.

We have to hold our politicians responsible for their collusion with their contributors. In some cases it may help the environment but in mast cases (Large Companies have more money & stand to gain the most.) that collusion is detrimental.

I hunted for much of my youth, so I can tell you that just the snap of a twig or the rustle of dead leaves underfoot can send a deer into panic. What then can the noise of a snowmobile do to animals in the remote areas of our National Parks. The administration has sided once again with big corporations in allowing the opening of our parks to snowmobiles.

Update: 8/25/04 Associated Press (A.P.) from the EPA the number of fish advisories rose from 2,814 in 2002 to 3,094 today. EPA administrator Mike Leavitt said the increase was due to more monitoring, not more pollution. Nearly all of the advisories involve contaminates such as mercury, dioxins, PCBs, Pesticides, & heavy metals, including arsenic, copper, & lead. Advisories currently cover 35% of the Nation's lake acreage & 24% of river miles. Can we really keep allowing large corporations to get away with poisoning our environment & thereby us?

11/2/04: (CNN) OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- A thaw of the Arctic icecap is accelerating because of global warming but nations in the region including the United States are deadlocked about how to stop it.

11/9/04: (CNN) OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- Global warming is heating the Arctic almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens millions of livelihoods and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, an eight-nation report said on Monday  I thought their wasn't any global warming, after all that's what George Bush told me.

11/11/04: (CNN) DENVER, Colorado (Reuters) -- The U.S. government expects to release a draft management plan this month detailing its plan for natural gas drilling in an environmentally sensitive area in western Colorado known as the Roan Plateau. This is a gift from George Bush to the stupid voters (Not all the voters) in Colorado & the people who voted the way the N.R.A. wanted them to. What good are your guns when there wont be any where to hunt?

11/12/04 (CNN)  WASHINGTON (AP) -- A planned government study into how children's bodies absorb pesticides and other chemicals has been temporarily suspended due to ethical concerns. The EPA  had agreed to accept $2 million for the $9 million study from the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents chemical makers.  What a good way to buy influence in the study.

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