It's A Dangerous World Out There!

Throughout the history of civilization, one of the things crucial for science to fluorish is the free exchange of ideas unencumbered by oppressive centralized government and religion. As Carl Sagan pointed out in his book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark, the values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. On this page, I want to talk a little about how science has been attacked in the past, and touch on some important attacks of the present.

Protecting the Environment

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, industrial pollution created significant damage to the environment and threatened people's health by poisoning the air (anyone remember the big smog alerts?) and water. Legislation passed in the U.S. beginning during the Nixon era helped tremendously to repair some of the damage and create a more healthy environment. Some people believe that the 2000 election in the U.S. has brought into power an administration and a Congress that are taking actions which threaten to destroy the health of the environment. Despite the huge size of the Earth, its resources are limited. The Earth is, as far as we know, the only planet that can support human life, or at least the only havitable planet that we can get to. It is a closed ecosystem, meaning we have to take care of the environment if we want to survive. The following is an attempt to follow developments relevant to this issue.

  • EPA eases pollution rule at U.S. power plants
    • The Bush administration Wednesday revised clean air regulations to make it easier for power plants and refineries to repair and upgrade their facilities - a move environmental groups said will cause more air pollution.
    • Lawyers at E.P.A. Say It Will Drop Pollution Cases
    • A federal appeals court on Wednesday at least temporarily blocked a Bush administration rule, due to take effect on Friday, that would have relaxed existing regulations and so allowed hundreds of aging power and industrial plants to make upgrades without installing modern pollution controls. The order, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, indicates that the court has substantial doubt about the White House's claims that it has authority to modify the Clean Air Act by regulation and that its changes would not hurt the environment.
  • Draft of Air Rule Is Said to Exempt Many Old Plants from part of the Clean Air Act
    • After more than two years of internal deliberation and intense pressure from industry, the Bush administration has settled on a regulation that would allow thousands of older power plants, oil refineries and industrial units to make extensive upgrades without having to install new anti-pollution devices. The new rule, a draft of which was made available to The New York Times by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, would constitute a sweeping and cost-saving victory for industries, exempting thousands of industrial plants and refineries from part of the Clean Air Act.
        • Senator James M. Jeffords, the Vermont independent who is the ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the new rule "just one more flagrant violation of the Clean Air Act and every court's opinion on this matter." He added: "Its publication will amount to malfeasance."
        • Eliot Spitzer, the attorney general of New York, said he would file a challenge to the new rule as soon as it was signed. "A rule that creates a 20 percent threshold eviscerates the statute," he said of the Clean Air Act. "This makes it patently clear that the Bush administration has meant all along to repeal the Clean Air Act by administrative fiat."
  • Environmental Deceivers
    • On environmental issues from ozone to methyl bromide, America's ruling party is pursuing a strategy of denial and deception. Writer Paul Krugman suspects that our current leaders won't be receptive to the most important lesson of the land where cities and writing were invented, ancient Iraq: that manmade environmental damage can destroy a civilization. Modern civilization's impact on the environment is, of course, far greater than anything the ancients could manage. Almost all the skeptics of global warming are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries. Meanwhile, news reports say, President Bush will spend much of this month buffing his environmental image. No doubt he'll repeatedly be photographed amid scenes of great natural beauty, uttering stirring words about his commitment to conservation. His handlers hope that the images will protect him from awkward questions about his actual polluter-friendly policies and, most important, his refusal to face up to politically inconvenient environmental dangers. So here's the question: will we avoid the fate of past civilizations that destroyed their environments, and hence themselves? And the answer is: not if Mr. Bush can help it.
  • Low Cost Environmental Plan Scrubbed by Bush Administration
    • In contrast to statements made by Bush administration officials, the E.P.A. found that a plan to reduce emissions linked to global warming could be carried out at little cost.
  • Environmental Carnage -- Starving The Conservation Trust Fund
    • By cutting the Conservation Trust Fund almost in half, the House snubbed President Bush's campaign pledge on open space.
  • Utah governor Mike Leavitt - Pres. Bush's new EPA nominee
    • President Bush chose Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt on Monday to head the Environmental Protection Agency, turning to another Republican governor to be his voice on an issue where his record with voters is weak.
    • Highway-wetlands dispute could be clue to EPA nominee's views on environment - Over the objections of environmentalists and Salt Lake City's mayor, Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt has spent $235 million on a new highway that would unsnarl a major commuter bottleneck.
    • Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt has an ability to work both sides of the aisle.
    • Mr. Leavitt is smart, soft-spoken and a formidable negotiator. Unlike his predecessor, Christie Whitman, he is at one with the administration: a Westerner, unlike Mrs. Whitman, and an antiregulatory one at that. Among his recent successes were the two back-room deals he worked out earlier this year with Gale Norton, the interior secretary, to strip federal protections from millions of acres of public land in Utah. The deals were deplored by environmentalists but celebrated by the oil, gas and off-road-vehicle interests, which hope to exploit that land for commercial purposes.
    • Gov. Leavitt defended his environmental record in Utah against critics of his nomination to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, saying that under his stewardship, the quality of air, water and public lands in Utah had indisputably improved. As he described it, the success had been achieved by seeking collaborative solutions involving public as well as private interests.
    • The Environmental Protection Agency's reputation has lately been damaged by its willingness, under pressure, to manipulate science to serve political ends. The most prominent example was some heavy-handed censorship of a chapter on the risks of global warming in what the agency advertised as a comprehensive report on the environment. Several senators have also accused the agency of suppressing evidence that reflects unfavorably on the administration's proposed clean air legislation. ... Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee owe it to the country and to the environment to use today's confirmation hearings to cross-examine Michael Leavitt, the Utah governor who is President Bush's choice to succeed Christie Whitman as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and to ask how he intends to restore the credibility and independence of an agency that for two years has been little more than an extension of Karl Rove's political operation in the White House. These senators — including, prominently, Joseph Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and the independent James Jeffords — also owe it to themselves. They have watched with mounting frustration as Mr. Bush has rescinded or weakened one environmental regulation after another without paying a political price. These hearings give them a chance to make a coherent case while people are paying attention.
    • "It will also be counterproductive," Ms. Whitman said. "We will pay a terrible political price if we undercut or walk away from the enforcement cases. It will be hard to refute the charge that we are deciding not to enforce the Clean Air Act." Mr. Lieberman said: "This memo illustrates clearly that the Bush administration knew that environmental rollbacks would hamper enforcement of the Clean Air Act. Yet they ignored these consequences and misled a Senate committee about them."
    • President Bush and his nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency need to stop retreating behind ecofriendly phrases when confronted on their environmental records. This is classic Orwellian double-speak.
    • Democratic senators on Monday withdrew their holds on President Bush's choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Gov. Michael O. Leavitt of Utah, clearing the way for Mr. Leavitt's confirmation in a vote by the full Senate on Tuesday. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York yielded after the White House agreed to re-examine the environmental effects of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.
    • After Long Delay, Senate Confirms Utah Governor as Head of E.P.A.
    • Executive agencies inevitably reflect the preferences of the president they serve. But the E.P.A. has a long tradition of providing solid science and independent analysis on complex environmental questions. That reputation is now at risk, largely because the agency has been asked to manipulate or withhold science to serve political ends. The most shameful examples were two instances of censorship on global warming. In 2002, the White House ordered a chapter on climate change deleted from the E.P.A.'s annual report on air pollution trends. Last summer, as the agency was finishing a broad assessment of environmental problems, the White House ordered so many changes in the global warming chapter that Christie Whitman yanked all but a few paragraphs. In other cases, the agency has been told not to provide cost-benefit analyses to senators sponsoring bills that compete with the administration's own proposals, even though such information has been routinely furnished in the past.
    • The White House called the shots when Christie Whitman was running the Environmental Protection Agency, and from the looks of things, the White House is still calling the shots. Michael Leavitt's first major action as E.P.A. administrator last week was to rescind a Clinton-era proposal to reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. The reversal came right out of the Karl Rove playbook, a long-promised payoff to President Bush's big contributors in the utility industry. The ruckus surrounding the announcement got his tenure off to a wobbly start.
  • White House to explore Mother Nature's role in global warming
  • U.S. C02 Emissions Will Rise Absent Strong Policy
    • Voluntary measures will not be enough to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, finds a new report released Thursday by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Without a mandatory carbon cap, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide - widely believed to be a leading contributor to climate change - are likely to rise across a wide range of possible energy futures, according to the study.
  • President Names Acting EPA Leaders
    • President George W. Bush today announced two current U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials to serve as Acting Administrator and Acting Deputy Administrator for the agency.
  • Public Participation Needed to Save Environment
    • Increased public participation is needed to stem the deterioration of the world's environment and to slow the growth of global poverty, according to a new report released today. Greater transparency and accountability can lead to fairer and more effective management of natural resources, finds the report, which calls on governments to reach out for local community input in decisions that affect ecosystems and to integrate environmental impacts into economic decision making.
  • Clouds Gather Over Future of Clear Skies
    • There is no chance the President's Clear Skies initiative will simply blow through Congress, members of both parties said at a House subcommittee hearing Tuesday on the administration's air pollution plan. Critics of the plan slammed the administration for not being forthcoming with analysis of rival legislation and said the plan rolls back existing law, while supporters raised concern that some of the bill's provisions might be too costly for industry to adopt.
  • Many U.S. Industry Giants Ignoring Global Warming, Thus Risking Investor Profits
    • Most of the nation's largest carbon dioxide emitting companies are failing to assess, disclose and address the financial risks posed by climate change, according to a new study of 20 of the world's largest companies. Unlike many of their foreign rivals, American industry giants such as ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Southern Company and Xcel Energy, continue to pursue business strategies that discount the global warming threat, the report details. "Such strategies leave them and their shareholders especially vulnerable to the increased financial risks and missed market opportunities posed by climate change," said Doug Cogan, author of the study and deputy director of social issues for the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC).
  • Human Effect on Climate Draws Scientific Consensus
    • A group of climate scientists has reaffirmed the "robust consensus view" emerging from the peer reviewed literature that climate warming observed at least in the northern hemisphere in the late 20th century was different from warming in the previous 1,000 years, and that human activity likely played an important role in causing it. In so doing, they refuted recent claims that the warmth of recent decades was not unprecedented in the context of the past thousand years.
  • Republicans for Environmental Protection Blast Bush for Withholding Information
    • Withholding of vital environmental information is getting to be a bad habit with the Bush administration, REP America, the national grassroots organization of Republicans for environmental protection, said today.
  • Getting the word out: Sierra Club airs anti-Bush ads
    • The Sierra Club launched a television ad Tuesday critical of the Bush administration's environmental policies, targeting some of the first issues ads of the 2004 presidential campaign in six swing states.
  • Second top official at EPA resigns
    • The second-ranking official at the Environmental Protection Agency submitted her resignation Thursday, a day before EPA Administrator Christie Whitman leaves her job to return to New Jersey.
  • Environmental group grades Bush's record
  • Politicians Censoring Science Teaching in Our Schools ... Is It Coming?
    • So what will Mr. DeLay and his associates do with their lock on power, once it is firmly established? They will push through a radical right-wing agenda. For example, expect to see much less environmental protection: Mr. DeLay has described the Environmental Protection Agency as "the Gestapo." How about the schools: after the Columbine school shootings, Mr. DeLay called a press conference in which he attributed the tragedy to the fact that students are taught the theory of evolution.
  • Democratic Field Tries to Add Punch to Environment Issue
  • White House Search for New EPA Head To Bring Democratic Focus on Bush Environmental Record
    • White House officials are narrowing the list of candidates to head the Environmental Protection Agency, and congressional Democrats are making clear they plan to use the nomination to challenge President Bush's environmental record.
  • Censorship on Global Warming - The EPA Report
    • The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.
      • read about it - The New York Times article
      • The New York Times article
      • read about it - The New York Times editorial
      • The New York Times editorial
        • When it comes to global warming, the Bush administration seems determined to bury its head in the sand and hope the problem will go away. Worse yet, it wants to bury any research findings that global warming may be a threat to human health or the environment.
      • read about it - Environmental News Network article
      • Environmental News Network article
        • The changes prompted an EPA staff memorandum that said the revisions demanded by the White House were so extensive that they would embarrass the agency because the section "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."
      • read about it - Environmental News Service article
      • Environmental News Service article
        • Doctored EPA Environment Report Raises Questions: The Environmental Protection Agency's "Draft Report on the Environment," released Monday by Administrator Christie Whitman, is billed as the first complete national picture of U.S. environmental quality and human health. But the document has stirred controversy and puzzled environmentalists, legislators and analysts who question the depth of the research and the omission of climate and water information available to the agency that paints a different picture of the health of the environment across the United States.
          • Upon reading about the memo, Senator Jim Jeffords, an Independent from Vermont and the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and other legislators sent an open letter to President George W. Bush asking for all drafts of the EPA report as well as all related comments prepared by government agencies. "We request a list of all participants involved in review of the document, including all administration officials and entities outside the administration," the legislators' letter said. "Furthermore, we ask that appropriate actions be taken regarding those responsible for doctoring this report."
      • read about it - Environmental News Service editorial
      • Environmental News Service editorial
        • The Earth Is Heating Up Despite the Lies: The vast majority of climate scientists are convinced that the Earth's temperature is increasing due to a build up of greenhouse gases from human activities, the news media regularly reports that there are scientists who claim it isn't true. It turns out that major energy companies are underwriting a pre-planned and well funded campaign to lie to us all. And the Bush administration joined the ranks of the deceivers this week.


        click for larger image
    • Christie Whitman's final report as head of the E.P.A. is a compelling argument for preserving -- and broadening where necessary -- the reach of environmental law.
  • Ballyhooed hydrogen fuel cells may have environmental drawback
  • With Polluters in Power in Congress, a Green Electoral Strategy is Gaining Traction
    • For the League of Conservation Voters (LCV), Earth Day is Election Day. "You can invest all you want in public education campaigns," said Scott Stoermer, LCV's communications director, "but if the men and women on Capitol Hill aren't making the right decisions about America's future, then public education does you no good. You have to get down, dirty, and political." When faced with the most antienvironmental president in history, a man who makes even Ronald Reagan look like Edward Abbey, will an educational message that soft-pedals the politics get results? Does it make sense to, say, work overtime to save local green space when national policies create air so unbreathable it's unsafe to be outside on summer days?
        • The election of George W. Bush - decided by just a few votes in Florida or by the Supreme Court, depending on one's level of cynicism - has been a disaster for the environment. Since his election, Bush has, among many other things, abandoned the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, weakened wetlands protection, gutted mining restrictions on federal lands, called for increased logging, refused to endorse higher automobile fuel-efficiency standards, sued California for enacting tough air laws, repealed a law that would have lowered power-plant emissions, and offered tax "reform" that allows an enormous spectrum of businesses to deduct the full cost of large SUVs in the first year of purchase. Not only is Bush working on many fronts at once to roll back environmental laws, he is also appointing antienvironmental judges whose legacy will be with us for decades to come.
  • Three U.S. States Sue EPA Over Carbon Dioxide
  • Environmentals Seek Special Counsel to Investigate No. 2 Official at Interior
  • Christie Whitman Resigns as EPA Chief
    • Christie Whitman, sometimes at odds with the Bush White House over environmental issues and a lightning rod for the administration's critics, resigned Wednesday as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Whitman said in a letter to President Bush that she was leaving to spend time with family. "Christie Whitman must feel like her own long national nightmare is over," said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, an advocacy group. "No EPA administrator has ever been so consistently and publicly humiliated by the White House."
  • Lieberman Unveils Plan to Reduce Foreign Oil Dependence by Two-Thirds in 10 Years
    • Democratic presidential candidate Joe Lieberman said Wednesday that his administration would work to reduce foreign oil dependence by two-thirds in 10 years and put the nation on a path to eliminate it completely within two decades. Lieberman's goal relies heavily on lowering the amount of fuel used by vehicles and an emerging process for turning coal into pollution-free hydrogen.
  • Environmental Groups Gain as Companies Vote on Issues
    • Shareholders have filed global warming resolutions with more than two dozen industrial companies this year. No one expected any of these resolutions to win majority support. But they are a measure of the increasing intensity of shareholders' challenges to corporations to respond to environmental concerns.
  • U.S. Renewable Energy Efforts Focused in a Handful of States
    • Although 19 states have acted to increase the nation's supply of wind, solar and other renewable energy resources, only five states account for 80 percent of the projected gains, finds a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
  • Campaign Slams U.S. Automakers For Gas Guzzlers
    • Environmentalists turned up the heat on U.S. automakers today for stalling on fuel economy and contributing to the nation's dependence on foreign oil. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Detroit Project say U.S. automakers and their political allies are determined to fight off any fuel economy increases, even though the technology exists to raise the fuel efficiency of cars and sport utility vehicles to 40 miles per gallon (mpg). "Detroit has been fighting safety and fuel economy standards for 30 years, all the while promising voluntary solutions that never arrive," said John Adams, president of NRDC.
  • A New Roadmap for U.S. Greenhouse Gas Reductions
    • The Bush administration may be steadfast against adopting any mandatory greenhouse gas emissions program, but there is increasing interest among some in the U.S. Congress for policies that would force the nation responsible for one quarter of the world's greenhouse gases to curb its emissions.
  • U.S. Must Cut Auto Greenhouse Gases, Says Research Group
    • U.S. automakers could nearly halve output of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by 2030 with new technology and more fuel-efficient models, a needed step to reverse growing emissions from the world's No. 1 transportation sector, an environmental think tank (the Pew Center on Global Climate Change) said Thursday.
  • Senators Protest Firing of EPA Scientist Over Sludge Safety
    • Two Senate committee chairmen are protesting what they described as the firing of a government microbiologist for raising concerns about federal standards on the use of treated sludge on soil. Grassley, the Finance Committee chairman, and Inhofe, the Environment and Public Works chairman, said Lewis is a whistleblower whose work has raised the quality of science at the EPA and has been validated by top scientists. Lewis works at an EPA research lab in Athens, Ga.
  • Critics Bash Bush on Earth Day 2003
    • The Bush administration is orchestrating an unprecedented assault on the nation's environmental laws and is allowing corporate interests to plunder America's natural resources, leaders of a dozen major environmental organizations told reporters today at an Earth Day press conference in Washington, DC. "Our message for this Earth Day is clear - behind closed doors and out of public view, the Bush administration is letting big corporations rewrite and weaken our environmental laws so they can pollute our air and poison our water, cut down our national forests and make taxpayers, rather than polluters, pay to clean up toxic wastes," said Gene Karpinski, executive director of U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG).
  • U.S. Renewable Energy Fueled By Local Efforts
    • The House energy bill passed last week contains some $20 billion in tax credits for oil, gas and nuclear power, and offers little to bolster the nation's development of renewable energy. But this disinterest in renewable energy at the national level is not matched by U.S. states and local communities, many of which continue to demonstrate increasing interest and commitment to developing and purchasing energy from renewable sources.
  • Older Plants Should Install Latest Pollution Controls, Panel Advises Congress
    • An independent study requested by Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency advised lawmakers to stop exempting older factories, refineries, and power plants from having to install state-of-the-art air pollution controls.
  • Bush's Environmental Strategy: Greenwashing the Truth
    • In the ongoing battle to protect the natural world, environmental impact statements and Environmental Protection Agency reports serve to alert the public about dangers that too often remain cloistered within the scientific community. Disclosures should be used as tools to help safeguard public health and the environment. But that's not how they are handled within the Bush administration. Several recent incidents show that, when faced with environmental crises attributable to business interests cozy with the White House, the administration has developed an alternative response: Suppress, Ignore, Preempt.
  • Bush Rolls Ahead With Small Fuel Economy Increase
    • The Bush administration raised fuel economy standards for most sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans Tuesday, but many contend the increase is too small to have much, if any, impact on the nation's dependence on oil or its need to combat global warming. Analysis by the National Academies of Science found that technology exists to raise the fuel economy of SUVs and trucks higher than the Bush administration's increase, without compromising vehicle safety or making automakers spend more than they can afford.
  • On The Wrong Track -- Administration's Mistakes on Energy Policy Keep Growing
    • In the last two years Dick Cheney and other top officials have gotten it wrong on energy, on the economy -- and their mistakes keep getting bigger. The Cheney task force was convened in the midst of the 2001 California energy crisis. It concluded, in brief, that the energy crisis was a long-term problem caused by meddling bureaucrats and pesky environmentalists, who weren't letting big companies do what needed to be done. In fact, the California energy crisis had nothing to do with environmental restrictions, and a lot to do with market manipulation. There's no longer any doubt: California's power shortages were largely artificial, created by energy companies to drive up prices and profits. What ended the crisis? Key factors included energy conservation and price controls.
  • Environmental Protection Being Cut Again--"Budgetary Shock and Awe"
    • The White House and Congress are about to march under the public's radar screen and lead the country into a decade of budgetary disaster. These direct hits will range from Medicaid to child care, education to food stamps, environmental protection to emergency doles for the poor.
  • The Missing Energy Strategy
    • The Senate struck a blow for the environment and for common sense by defeating President Bush's second attempt to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. In truth, Arctic oil will have no influence on gas prices until it actually comes out of the ground, and even then it is likely to reduce American dependence on foreign oil by only a few percentage points. Neither the White House nor the Congressional Republican leadership shows any appetite for developing what America really needs: innovative policies that point toward a cleaner, more efficient and less oil-dependent energy future.
  • "What's Your Point?" - political cartoon

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