George W. Bush’s ‘convenient’ truth

For more than three decades, Al Gore has been one of the nation’s strongest voices for the protection of the environment. His first book, Earth in the Balance (1992), had pushed protection of the environment onto the national political agenda; as vice,president, he became the Clinton Administration’s primary advocate to protect the environment and the nation’s natural resources.

During the past seven years, Gore co-founded a major TV cable network (Current TV), which was honoured with an Emmy in 2007; wrote the best-selling book about the effects of global warming, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), which was turned into a box office hit that won an Oscar for the best documentary; wrote a best-seller, The Assault on Reason (2007), which received the Quill Award for history/current events/politics; and increased his public appearances to speak out about a number of social issues, including environmental protection.

During the past seven years, George W. Bush spun a nation not only into a war that has destroyed the environment and natural resources of Iraq, but had also begun a war in America that is leading to a destruction of its environment and natural resources.

President Bush consistently ignored the evidence of global warming, and suppressed the views of government scientists. He allowed Enron and other energy companies to direct the nation’s energy policy. With a cabinet that includes persons who either were employed by large oil and coal companies or were paid lobbyists against environmental protections, he reduced federal environmental rules.

He believes that most of the 250 million acres under jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management should be available so private industry can strip the resources for their own economic gain. He has allowed extensive off-shore drilling, increased the incursion by mining companies, and allowed logging companies to devastate federal lands.

He is a leading advocate for allowing oil companies to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, claiming it’s for “national security”, but completely oblivious to the reality that such intrusion would severely alter the balance of nature, while yielding little gas and oil for the American people.

He has permitted gas-spewing recreational vehicles to tear up federal parks and permanently disturb the wildlife. He reversed a campaign pledge to reduce acceptable levels of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, and determined that higher levels of arsenic and other toxins in drinking water was acceptable. He reduced the effectiveness of the Environmental Protection Agency, preferring companies to undergo “voluntary compliance”, and eliminated the tax upon the oil and chemical industries that paid for the clean up of SuperFund toxic waste sites. It’s now the taxpayers not polluters who are paying for clean-up operations.

Within months of his first inaugural, Bush withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Protocol that called for global environmental protection by stabilising greenhouse gas emissions. With Australia about to sign the Protocol, 173 nations will have signed the agreement; the US will become the only industrialised nation not to sign.

And now, last Monday evening, President George W. Bush was meeting with five American Nobel laureates, including Al Gore. By all accounts, the 40-minute private meeting with Mr Gore was “cordial”. The President, after snubbing the former vice-president when the Nobel committee made its announcement, could now be cordial. He had personally called Gore to make sure the former vice-president was available, and was willing to rearrange the White House schedule to accommodate Mr Gore. At the post-Thanksgiving ceremony, Bush could smile and backslap. After all, George W. Bush was president, and nothing that Al Gore was doing to protect the environment would ever be enough to erase this president’s political ability to alter the environment to benefit corporate interests.