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Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
Ref. : Letters to the editor
06.24 Mr. Holder, You Must Hold Torturers Accountable
06.29 Thinking about Climate
06.26 False Health-Scare Ad on CNN
06.25 Louella Learns the Limits of Medicare
06.23 The Simple Answer to America’s Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All
06.23 Tell ABC: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
06.23 Serving the Medical-Industrial Complex
06.22 Thinking about Recoveries
06.20 Obama's Health Care Waterloo
06.15 Obama, Like Clinton Before Him, is Blowing the Chance for Real Health Care Reform
06.11 Two Key Health-Care Numbers
06.10 Big Breakthroughs for Single Payer Health Care
06.10 Readying Americans for Dangerous, Mandatory Vaccinations
06.29 WP's Connolly Back, on Health Reform
06.17 Hypocrisy and Hope: Western Coverage, Iranian Courage
06.15 Excusing Outrages of the Right
06.11 Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess
06.30 Obama's Torture Hypocrisy
06.30 Court Circular: Annals of Imperial Continuity
06.29 Obama, They Want You to Fail
06.26 Who to Trust on a Truth Commission?
06.26 Tarnished Shields: The Morally Bankrupt 'Family Values' Republican Leadership
06.25 America's "Bases of Empire"
06.24 Twelve Angry White People: Jury Nullification in a Pennsylvania Coal Town
06.24 Touring Empire's Ruins
06.23 Employers are Undermining the Economic Stimulus Program
06.19 Criminalizing Dissent: Obama Pot Calls Iranian Kettle Black
06.17 Afghanistan's Operation Phoenix
06.16 Are You Ready for War with a Demonized Iran?
06.13 Where's the Anger as the Wheels Come Off Obama's and the Democrats' Recovery Program?
06.10 Waiving the Rules for Old Glory
06.10 Obama's Era of Openness Is Closed
07.03 Reviewing Marjorie Cohn and Kathleen Gilberd's "Rules of Disengagement"
07.01 Iraq: A Bitter Strategic Failure
06.25 It's All Good, Again: 'Uptick' in the American-Made Tides of Violence in Iraq
06.22 Obama Opposes Plame-gate Release
06.21 Dexter's Legions: The "Good" Killers of the "Good" War
06.18 Extending the Tradition: Proudly Taking American Torture Into the Future
06.15 New UN Report Denounces America's Human Rights Record
06.14 Fear Rules
07.01 Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism:" The Economic Strategy of Imperial America
06.23 Obama's Financial Reform Proposal - A Stealth Scheme for Global Monetary Control
06.10 Cyberscares About Cyberwars Equal Cybermoney
07.01 Pirates of the Mediterranean
06.29 Color Revolutions, Old and New
06.25 Iran Divided & the 'October Suprise'
06.23 Astringent Corrective: AbuKhalil on Iran's Turmoil
06.20 Are the Iranian Protests Another US Orchestrated “Color Revolution?”
06.20 Through a Glass Darkly: Sifting Myth and Fact on Iran
06.19 Iran's Election and US - Iranian Elections
06.16 The Ir-Af-Pak War: Obama Looses the Manhunters
06.12 Israeli War Crimes Against Children During Operation Cast Lead
ENVIRONMENT:
Trashing the Environment
A third of Bush's appointments to federal courts have worked as lobbyists for polluting industries, such as oil, gas, timber and mining. By May 2004, Bush had appointed over 100 former lobbyists and company lawyers to head agencies that regulate industry and the environment. These former lobbyists redefine policies to shift regulations in favor of their former clients, most often polluting industries.
Far-right Congressmen consider environmental protection bad for business profits and are attempting to repeal or seriously weaken the Wilderness Preservation Act, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Endangered Species Act, as well as regulations that conflict with special treatment for private property and commercial development.
In February 2006, Karl Rove bragged that President Bush has transformed conservatism from "reactionary" to "forward looking" by incorporating liberal ideas into foreign policy. The GOP highlights Bush's environmental saving efforts such as increasing mileage requirements for SUVs by .03 miles per gallon and cutting taxes so people can buy larger cars.
In April 2006, studies revealed that the US was the world's biggest polluter in 2004, emitting more greenhouse gases—the major cause of global warming—than any time in history, a record 7.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. These increases are the result of greater consumption of electricity, increased industrial output and more traffic, which collectively accounted for 94 percent of carbon dioxide emissions. There are higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere now than at any time in the last 10 million years.
Carbon dioxide emissions lead to global warming, which continue to create new weather records. In May, the National Climatic Data Center announced that April in the US was the hottest since record keeping began in 1895. Dry conditions and severe drought persisted across 31 percent of the country, from the western high plains to the Missouri Valley. Phoenix recorded 143 days without rain, breaking the previous drought record of 101 consecutive days, set in 2000. Last year, parts of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers filled with sandbars as the drainages experienced the worse drought since 1988.
Evidence from numerous sources reveals that Bush and the Republicans have been a complete disaster in preserving the environment. They reward polluters and blissfully trust unregulated "free enterprise" to curb oil consumption and voluntary regulation to halt pollution. These policies arouse little public outcry as long as easy credit and massive Chinese imports make life abundant, if pressured, for the average person, but the effects of the nation's gluttony for oil, automobiles, energy and an exorbitant standard of living has serious repercussions.
With only 5 percent of the world's population, the US consumes about 30 percent of the world's resources and faces increased disruption from hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, drought, and other climate changes that will increasingly impinge on our lifestyle. Global warming is irreversible, but the longer we wait to reverse policies and begin protecting the environment, the greater the climatic shifts and human dislocations will be and the more arbitrary and restrictive the changes necessary to curb the resulting damage.
In the meantime, the nation will continue to suffer man-made disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina. It's time to place environmental protection at the top of the priority list for national action.
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This story was published on June 2, 2006.
