Bush versus the environment

by Bob Devine

"Since becoming president, George W. Bush has walked away from the Kyoto Protocol, pushed for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, weakened protections for endangered species and wilderness, and retreated from his campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide. But the president's agenda reaches deeper than these well-known policies. In Bush Versus the Environment, Robert S. Devine shows how the White House is quietly undermining the entire system of environmental safeguards that has developed over the past thirty years. The Administration's tactics include: encouraging lawsuits against the federal government that challenge existing environmental laws, and then feebly defending the cases in court; ignoring scientific evidence that doesn't support President Bush's goals, and pressuring government scientists to produce the results the Administration wants; and using fuzzy math to overestimate the costs and underestimate the benefits of regulations that protect human health an