Monday, 29 Apr 2002

Ill Duce

It's one thing for lobbyists to ply governmental officials with policy requests (that's what they do); it's another thing for government officials to actively seek input from lobbyists when crafting national policy. But apparently, in the Bush administration, that's what officials do: According to Energy Department documents (released following a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council), a top official emailed a leading gas industry lobbyist in March 2001 to ask for help in shaping energy policy. The email reads, in part, "If you were King, or Il Duce, what would you include in a national energy policy, especially with respect to natural gas issues? I am working up the policy elements, and ... thought I would pick your brain." The Energy Department said none of the lobbyist's recommendations was included in the final energy policy, but environmentalists said the email was damning evidence that the Bush administration is in bed with the energy industry, and expressed frustration that the document had been released later than scheduled -- and after the conclusion of the Senate's debate over the energy bill.

Teach a Man to Fish and He'll Have No Job Security

New England's fishing industry will be substantially scaled back under new federal rules announced Friday. The regulations, which reduce the number of days fishers can work, close key fishing areas, and limit the size of fish that may be caught, were met with dismay by the industry. After more than 400 years of large-scale fishing, the region's fish stocks bottomed out in 1994, prompting the government to close more than 5,000 square nautical miles of prime fishing spots and reduce the number of days at sea to 50 percent of pre-1994 levels for all vessels, among other regulations. Even fishers agree that some of those measures were necessary to save fish stocks, but now, they argue, species are recovering and regulations should be relaxed, instead of tightened. Conservationists disagree and support the stricter restrictions, pointing out that only one of 18 ground-fish species has fully recovered from overfishing. Overall, the North Atlantic has just one-sixth the number of fish it had a century ago, while fishing is eight times more intensive.

I'm Too Sexy for My Gills

Meanwhile, in other news about fish, a transgenic version of the North Atlantic salmon is the first genetically engineered animal up for review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use as food. The fish looks more or less like its natural cousin, but it grows seven times faster and is, we kid you not, sexier (if you're a salmon of the opposite sex, that is). Scientists achieved those characteristics by including genes from Chinook salmon and ocean pout fish. Aqua Bounty Farms, of Waltham, Mass., hopes to farm and market the Frankensalmon, but environmentalists fear mutant salmon could escape and disrupt the already-threatened wild population. The fish is likely to join the ranks of cows with bovine growth hormone and genetically modified corn and soybeans as watershed species in the battle over bioengineered foods. Maryland and Oregon already have laws regulating transgenic fish, and Alaska and California are considering outright bans.

Clear As Mud

President Bush rejected a U.S. EPA proposal that would have gone much further toward improving air quality than his pet Clean Skies Initiative, according to administration documents. To cite just one example, the EPA proposal would have limited sulfur dioxide emissions to 2 million tons per year by 2010; by contrast, the (so-called) Clear Skies plan would limit such emissions to 3 million tons per year by 2018. The White House claimed the EPA plan was unrealistic, but critics say it was rejected because it imposed too many restrictions on the energy industry. Bush continues to maintain that his plan would do more to improve air quality than the 1970 Clean Air Act and 1990 amendments (signed by Bush, Sr.), which would be replaced, but he has not yet released any details to back up that claim, and it is widely disputed by environmentalists.