Tuesday, 04 Dec 2001

News Flash: Bush Administration Favors Business

Evidence continues to mount that the Bush administration is in bed with business groups. The latest proof is an email, provided to the Washington Post by a disenchanted lobbyist, that described a campaign to undermine environmental, health, and safety regulations. A Republican congressional aide to the House subcommittee overseeing federal regulations sent the email in late September to a dozen lobbyists (think U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Farm Bureau types) inviting them to a secret brainstorming session to discuss regulations they found too burdensome. The aide, Barbara Kahlow, explained that President Bush's controversial regulatory czar, John Graham, wanted to work confidentially with lobbyists to target onerous rules; a chart included in her email, listing 57 such rules, was labeled "non-public" (in boldface with underlining). Confronted with the email and chart, Graham denied contributing to or even seeing the list and vowed not to change any regulations without input from affected agencies and the public.

Speedy Gone-zales

Mexico is losing forests at almost twice the rate previously thought, the country's Environment Ministry announced yesterday. A new multi-agency study of satellite images taken from 1993 and 2000 found that average forest loss in that time was about 2.78 million acres a year, the world's second-highest deforestation rate. Over the eight years, the amount of forest lost was equivalent to the area of Ireland. Brazil is losing forests at a faster clip, but the causes are the same: logging, fires, and the expansion of ranches and farms.

Free-range Checking

The Sante Fe group Forest Guardians is hoping to raise $1 million to boot cattle from thousands of state-owned acres in Arizona and New Mexico. In late November, the group won a case before Arizona's Supreme Court that ended a state policy of allowing only ranchers to lease state school trust land, which includes about 8.3 million acres. The high court said the Arizona Land Department should instead grant the leases to the highest bidder, therefore maximizing the amount of money available for state schools. Ranchers are irate about the ruling, though the state may retain some small ability to tilt the bidding in their favor. After years of frustration, enviros (and some conservative free-market groups) are in seventh heaven. With 1 million bucks, John Horning of Forest Guardians said his group could control 50,000 to 100,000 acres of the most ecologically important school trust land.

ANWR Sedated

The latest attempt by U.S. Sen. Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling tanked yesterday when almost the entire Senate (including Murkowski!) voted against it. Working with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Murkowski had hoped to tag the GOP energy bill and a separate anti-human-cloning bill on to an unrelated railroad retirement bill. Lott and Murkowski needed to get 60 votes to force the Senate to consider adding the amendment. Apparently, they could only rustle up 54 or 55 votes, so they called the whole stratagem off, and the Senate voted 94-1 against the plan. Murkowski downplayed the vote as "meaningless," but environmentalists said it was a victory for their cause.

Take That Back

Maryland yesterday became the first state to lose the authority to enforce federal clean air laws. The loss is the result of the state's failure to act on a U.S. EPA order to create more public participation in the industrial permit application process. Under Maryland law, only the owners of property abutting an industrial polluter can protest a permit application, a stipulation that violates the federal Clean Air Act. The Sierra Club sued the EPA last year to enable more citizen participation in Maryland and many other states. An EPA official said that the agency was slated to approve plans to increase participation in Virginia and D.C., but that Maryland had failed to meet a Dec. 1 deadline to show progress with its program. The EPA will now oversee industry requests for permits in the state.