Ex-EPA Chiefs Blame Bush in Global Warming

[quaoar]

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/01/18/ap2459535.html

Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency - five Republicans and one Democrat - accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems.

"I don't think there's a commitment in this administration," said Bill Ruckelshaus, who was EPA's first administrator when the agency opened its doors in 1970 under President Nixon and headed it again under President Reagan in the 1980s.

Russell Train, who succeeded Ruckelshaus in the Nixon and Ford administrations, said slowing the growth of "greenhouse" gases isn't enough.

"We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it," he said at an EPA-sponsored symposium centered around the agency's 35th anniversary. "To sit back and just push it away and say we'll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive."

[cal04]

1. Environmental groups put out a report today.

Climate pact will cause temperature rise, report warns

"Things like the kakadu wetlands are very definitely going to be going," says the World Wide Fund For Nature Australia's chief executive Greg Bourne.

"The Great Barrier Reef under a 4 degree warming it will be bleached most of the time."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1550671.htm

[Gidney N Cloyd]

2. "dishonest to the people and self-destructive"

I believe that's a clause in every WH job description, isn't it?

[AngryAmish]

3. Why is it chiefs?

The plural of knife is knives. The plural of wolf is wolves. Why wouldn't the plural of chief be chieves?

[quaoar]

5. But the plural of thief

is GOP.

[Sequoia]

8. Because of Life and Lives

[acmejack]

4. Here is a timely article as well.

Is It Warm in Here? We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0118-33.htm

[rodeodance]

6. Is It Warm in Here?--I wrote a thanks to the author-good work.

"So many of the things that pass for news don't matter in any ultimate sense. But if people such as Lovejoy and Kolbert are right, we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind. Kolbert concluded her series last year with this shattering thought: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing." She's right. The failure of the United States to get serious about climate change is unforgivable, a human folly beyond imagining."

[e-mail]

Published on Wednesday, January 18, 2006 by the Washington Post

Is It Warm in Here? We Could Be Ignoring the Biggest Story in Our History
by David Ignatius


One of the puzzles if you're in the news business is figuring out what's "news." The fate of your local football team certainly fits the definition. So does a plane crash or a brutal murder. But how about changes in the migratory patterns of butterflies?

Scientists believe that new habitats for butterflies are early effects of global climate change -- but that isn't news, by most people's measure. Neither is declining rainfall in the Amazon, or thinner ice in the Arctic. We can't see these changes in our personal lives, and in that sense, they are abstractions. So they don't grab us the way a plane crash would -- even though they may be harbingers of a catastrophe that could, quite literally, alter the fundamentals of life on the planet. And because they're not "news," the environmental changes don't prompt action, at least not in the United States.

What got me thinking about the recondite life rhythms of the planet, and not the 24-hour news cycle, was a recent conversation with a scientist named Thomas E. Lovejoy, who heads the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment. When I first met Lovejoy nearly 20 years ago, he was trying to get journalists like me to pay attention to the changes in the climate and biological diversity of the Amazon. He is still trying, but he's beginning to wonder if it's too late.

.....

[acmejack]

7. The sentence about the 250 million acres of arctic ice lost

since 1979 struck me particularly hard. All lost while I was too busy to even notice, during what were arguably the best years of my life.

[Democat]

9. Democrats should be putting a lot more effort into environmental fights

Even most moderate Republicans support the environment, yet Democrats don't seem to make it a big issue during elections.

We need new leadership and new strategy to beat the Republicans in 2006 and 2008.

[Karenina]

10. But FIRST

an environmentally friendly waste dump for the electronic voting machines must be mandated IMMEDIATELY. ;-)

[LynnTheDem]

11. "FIVE REPUBLICANS and one Democrat - accused the Bush administration..."

"FIVE REPUBLICANS and one Democrat..."

Nothing but a buncha pinko commie leftwing libruls how DARE they question bush-god! Them 5 bastids are just pretending to be republicans to make bush look bad! :eyes:

[RedEarth]

12. kr

[f-bush]

13. Of course it's shrub's fault

him and his fundy buddies have this end of the world thing going and don't feel a need to protect the environment.

[underpants]

14. Ex-heads of EPA blast Bush on global warming (5 R's 1 Dem)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10913795/



Republicans, Democrat say president is neglecting environment


EPA chief Stephen Johnson, with michrophone, is joined by former administrators, from left, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, Russell Train, Bill Ruckelshaus, Lee Thomas, Carol Browner and Bill Reilly Wednesday in Washington at a symposium marking the EPA's 35th anniversary.

Updated: 7:14 a.m. ET Jan. 19, 2006
WASHINGTON - Six former heads of the Environmental Protection Agency — five Republicans and one Democrat — accused the Bush administration Wednesday of neglecting global warming and other environmental problems.

“I don’t think there’s a commitment in this administration,” said Bill Ruckelshaus, who was EPA’s first administrator when the agency opened its doors in 1970 under President Nixon and headed it again under President Reagan in the 1980s.



Christie Whitman, the first of three EPA administrators in the current Bush administration, said people obviously are having “an enormous impact” on the earth’s warming.

“You’d need to be in a hole somewhere to think that the amount of change that we have imposed on land, and the way we’ve handled deforestation, farming practices, development, and what we’re putting into the air, isn’t exacerbating what is probably a natural trend,” she said. “But this is worse, and it’s getting worse.”

[rodeodance]

15. k

[ChairmanAgnostic]

16. damn libruls. Don't they know there's a rapture coming, so we can rape

the land until we ascend? Plus, just look at the profits our campaign donors are making because of us! That translates into more money in our -re-erection funds, so we can screw the environment even more.

FIVE GOP EPA directors? Damn traitors. Turncoats. How dare they rely on facts and data. I thought we erased all that stuff.

[shoelace414]

17. Puffy's response - "there is a difference of opinion"

No there isn't. you don't want to do anything

[wordpix]

18. GREAT! Now the leakers are coming out in the open!