- Weakened Fuel Efficiency Standards
April 25, 2002 Amendment to the Energy Policy and
Conservation Act of 1975 that would prohibit the
fuel efficiency standards for pickup trucks from ever being raised above the
current 20.7 miles per gallon.
- Tried to get rid of 90% of the wildlife refuge in the U.S.
The U.S Fish
& Wildlife Service website says "Congress
has designated 75 wilderness areas on 63 units of the National Wildlife Refuge
System in 26 states. Over 90 per cent — or 18.6 million acres — of Refuge
System wilderness is in Alaska. The remaining 2.5 million wilderness acres are
in the lower 48 states." That means that 90% of our refuge area
would be destroyed by opening ANWR to drilling.
Wildlands threatened
by this administration:
- Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska
- Grand Staircase - Escalante
National Monument, Utah
- Rocky Mountain Front, Montana
- Upper Missouri
River Breaks National Monument, Montana
- Red Desert, Wyoming
- California
Coastal National Monument, California
- Carrizo Plains National Monument,
California
- Little Missouri National Grasslands, North Dakota
- Otero Mesa,
New Mexico
- Vermillion Basin, Colorado
- Book Cliffs, Utah
- Bridger-Teton
National Forest, Wyoming
- Hanford Reach National Monument, Washington
-
Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, Colorado
- Ironwood Forest
National Monument, Arizona
- Crown Point, New Mexico
- Kaibab National
Forest, Arizona
- Valle Vidal/Carson National Forest, New Mexico
- San Juan
National Forest, Colorado
- Weatherman Draw, Montana
Now, since I am personally from the four corners area of Colorado (the
junction of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona) you can see why I take
this really seriously. The San Juan National Forest was like my
childhood playground.
Every organization that deals with the outdoors from Greenpeace to Ducks
Unlimited has blasted the Bush administration on this as well as the "Forest
Initiative". See the article "Conservative Sportsmen Turn Against Bush"
Published on Wednesday, January 28, 2004 by USA TODAY
- (Destroy the) Healthy Forests Initiative
The health-by-logging
approach reveals the wide separation between two opposing views concerning the
best use of U.S. forests. The administration, seeing the forests as a source
of extractive wealth, presses for more logging and road-building in wilderness
areas. Its strategists appear determined to mute or override the provision of
the 1976 National Forest Management Act requiring that forest plans "provide
for the diversity of plant and animal communities."
The economic argument
for increased road-building and logging is unfounded. It is contradicted by
the U.S. Forest Service's own measure of forests' contributions to the
nation's economy. Of the $35 billion yielded in 1999 (the last year for which
a comprehensive accounting was published), 77.8 percent came from recreation,
fish and wildlife, only 13.7 percent from timber harvest, and the modest
remainder from mining and ranching. Roughly the same disproportion existed in
the percentages of the 822,000 jobs generated by national forests
- Cutting Funding for
National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Immediately after taking
office, the first budget approved by G.W. Bush cut the funding for NREL by
over 35% from $373M to $237M. [Department of Energy Website]
- Clear (the)
Skies (of birds) Initiative
The Clear Skies legislation
sets new targets for emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and nitrogen oxides
from U.S. power plants. But these targets are weaker than those that
would be put in place if the Bush administration simply implemented and
enforced the existing law! Compared to current law, the Clear Skies plan would
allow three times more toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur
emissions, and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen
oxides. It would also delay cleaning up this pollution by up to a decade
compared to current law and force residents of heavily-polluted areas to wait
years longer for clean air compared to the existing Clean Air Act.
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