One thing people are missing about this. If you happen to read the
political magazines, you get a picture of the point of view of the
regular columnists. Some are conservative, some are moderate, some are
liberal, some are fair, some are knee-jerk, some parrot the party line,
some are contrarian, etc. Gregg Easterbrook is not a conservative,
he's a moderate. And he's a contrarian.
When we get down to it, the point of the article is that *Clinton*
didn't have any sort of environmental record that can be contrasted
with Bush's. Sure, there was the last minute flurry of executive
orders. What was that about? Well, it happened because Clinton was
absoulutely unwilling to expend any political capital on environmental
issues. All these things could have been done earlier in Clinton's
term. Why weren't they? Because the republicans would have fought
them, local governments would have complained, and Clinton would have
had to either fight for them or back down. So he made them at the last
minute, knowing that Bush could easily overturn them.
Not because he believed in the proposals (if he believed in them he'd
have supported them), but because he knew Bush would have to repeal
them. And that would cost Bush. See, anything one president can do
through executive orders, another president can undo. The only way to
create lasting change is through legislation, which Clinton steadfastly
refused to do.
Now, about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Exactly what is the
differnce between ANWR and any other section of the North Slope of
Alaska? The only difference is that this section was designated a
wildlife refuge, and the other parts weren't. Drilling for oil in
Prudhoe Bay has had environmental consequences, right? Where those
consequences catastrophic? They may have been unneccesary, they may
have been undesirable, but I don't know anyone who thought they were
catastrophic.
But Prudhoe Bay wasn't designated a wildlife refuge, so exploration
there didn't require an act of congress. That's the only difference.
And where has the "ANWR would only provide one (or two or three or
whatever) month's oil supply" factoid come from? There hasn't been any
oil exploration in ANWR, so how can anyone estimate the reserves?
And ANWR is roughly the size of the state of Pennsylvania. Imagine an
oil rig in Pennsylvania. Does that ruin the state of Pennsylvania? In
fact, the main ecological problem from drilling in ANWR would not be in
ANWR, but in Prince William Sound, where the oil tankers ship.
And of course, oil exploration the environmental consequences of oil
exploration happen every day in the rest of the United States. The
only difference is that ANWR was arbitrarily designated a wildlife
refuge and these other places weren't. The designation of the
boundaries of the refuge was a political decision, not an ecological
decision.
Now, on to the Kyoto treaty. The Kyoto treaty was dead, it had no
chance of passing. According to the US constitution, the Senate must
ratify all treaties. In 1997 the Senate passed a resolution 95-0
stating that it would not ratify the treaty, even before it was
submitted by the Clinton administration. Not one senator said they
would support the treaty. Which means that Clinton's supposed support
for the treaty was meaningless, and was in fact counterproductive.
The Kyoto treaty is as dead as the Kellog-Briand pact that was supposed
to outlaw war. Recognizing that fact doesn't harm the environment one
bit.
If we really wanted to lower greenhouse emissions, we'd concentrate on
compounds other than CO2. The only way to reduce CO2 emissions is to
cut down on energy production. But we can cut down on other greenhouse
gasses through more efficient processes. Focussing on CO2 is foolish
because there just aren't going to be any CO2 reductions. We can pass
all the laws we want, sign all the treaties we want, but it's not going
to happen, it doesn't matter what the ecological consequences are.
Realizing this can be helpful, because then we can concentrate on doing
things that have a chance of actually being done.
=====
Darryl
Think Galactically -- Act Terrestrially
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