These images are from a series of drawings titled “Unnaturalism” by artist Don Simon. His work examines the impact of industrialization and sprawl on ecosystems. From his artist statement:

“Throughout history, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has been less than kind to our cohabitants on the planet. We build, produce, and consume with little or no regard to the impact it has on the environment. It is the nature of nature to adapt and evolve in order to survive, and we are forcing other species to deal with compromised, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems.

“This series of triptychs depicts scenes resulting from our tragic indifference. They are rendered in a beautiful and natural way, highlighting the idea that we find this acceptable. We are numb to the damage—and so, the unnatural becomes natural to us. This may be the saddest commentary of all.”

Simon, who walked away from a career in advertising to pursue art full-time five years ago, has shown his work in galleries and museums across the U.S. and in Europe. He lives and works in Medford, N.J., just outside of Philadelphia.

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My assignment, which I chose to accept, is to offer a tangent of positive thoughts about the Bush administration’s environmental record before readers return to the barrage of verbal drubbing that other Grist writers are no doubt serving up.

Rather than pick out nuggets that lie here and there amidst the dross, a fairer approach is to place the 43rd president’s record on a spectrum with two contrasting bookends of monumental accomplishment and disappointing inaction.

The monumental accomplishment took place two weeks before the administration’s expiration. Relying on a precedent established by Theodore Roosevelt and employed by successors from both parties, President Bush invoked the Antiquities Act to establish three marine monuments that protect some 125 million acres of habitat, history, and beauty in America’s Pacific territorial waters.

The Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands, and Rose Atoll marine national monuments are a treasure of coral reefs, whales, sea turtles, dozens of bird species, hundreds of varieties of fish, the deepest spot one can go without burrowing into the planetary crush, and weird thermal formations that support the toughest life forms on Earth.

The monuments’ waters, islands, and atolls are, for the most part, undisturbed. If Pacific Islanders from a millennium ago were brought forward in time to paddle through the newly preserved waters today, they would find a great deal to recognize.

Bush’s action was the most sweeping use of the Antiquities Act since this somewhat obscure but highly effective conservation law was enacted in 1906.

Combined with the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, which Bush designated in 2006, his marine preserves are equal in size to the combined extent of all national parks, national wildlife refuges, and the National Landscape Conservation System, plus 9 million acres in change.

Every acre is a wonderful legacy. More importantly, Bush’s actions have given impetus to the emerging recognition that special places at sea deserve the highest levels of protection, akin to national parks and wilderness areas on land. His marine monuments laid a foundation for more and stronger ocean protections by his successors.

Not as dramatic as Bush’s vast ocean monuments but still worthy of note was the president’s expansion of America’s protected wilderness. Bush’s approach to wilderness was what my Minnesota in-laws would call “fair to middlin’”—he did not aggressively champion wilderness bills, but neither did he truck with the extremism that invariably equates wilderness stewardship with an anti-capitalist plot by waffle-stomping elitists.

Bush’s signature on wilderness legislation added nearly 2.5 million acres to the National Wilderness Preservation System.

Given the muddiness of the administration’s record on air quality, it’s easy to forget the president’s adoption of tougher fuel and engine standards to control harmful emissions from non-road diesel-fueled equipment.

The sooty gunk that shoots out of exhaust pipes from bulldozers and other non-road vehicles is bad news for hearts and lungs in cities across America. The standards, adopted in 2004, are expected to prevent 12,000 premature deaths, 8,900 hospitalizations, and 1 million lost workdays.

Likewise, Bush’s decision to flounce out of global climate negotiations shouldn’t make us overlook the administration’s 2007 success in securing approval of a proposal to bring forward by 10 years the Montreal Protocol’s phase-out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), a refrigerant with a heat-trapping potential hundreds of times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

The accelerated phase-out could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions up to 16 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent. That’s more than two years’ worth of U.S. CO2 emissions.

Still, the administration was mostly hat and few cattle on climate change and associated energy issues. Which brings us to the other bookend of the spectrum—the opportunity that should have been seized on September 12, 2001.

At one of those rare moments in history when the nation was traumatized and the president had the citizens’ undivided attention, Bush had an opportunity to give U.S. energy policy a hard corrective turn.

It was a moment of clarity. At last, the dangers of oil dependence had broken through the fog of political inertia and narrow agendas. Had Bush seized that moment, he could have begun shifting the American energy economy away from oil, away from conventional fossil fuels, away from waste, and toward safer, cleaner, more efficient energy choices.

For a Texas oilman to do that would have been a Nixon-going-to-China gambit; actually, it would have vastly overshadowed Nixon’s diplomatic coup.

But the moment passed. Instead of explaining the facts about our dangerous energy habits, the president told us to go shopping. Business as usual resumed. Oil consumption continued growing. Meanwhile, the U.S. had checked out of international climate negotiations. Nearly seven years were lost.

Only when gasoline prices had reached painful levels, and only when the evidence for human-caused climate change became too compelling to ignore did the administration begin taking halting steps toward energy diversification and conservation. Bush told us that America is addicted to oil and put his name on overdue legislation strengthening motor vehicle fuel economy standards.

Even so, the administration did not accept statutory limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. It continued pushing aggressive growth in domestic fossil fuel production offshore, in Alaska, and in the Intermountain West. It made repeated runs at weakening the Clean Air Act’s pollution control requirements for old coal-fired power plants.

A week before clocking out, the administration finalized a regulation easing controls on mountaintop removal coal mining, about as destructive a fossil fuel production method that can be found anywhere.

How much better it would have been if, rather than enabling more mountaintop removal, oil drilling, and climate change inaction, the president had emulated Theodore Roosevelt’s stunning final year of conservation, when the Rough Rider set aside more than 30 wildlife refuges, established nearly 140 national forests, and protected the Grand Canyon.

Bush often professes to admire TR. Had Bush done on land and in the air—by actively leading the country toward a carbon-free future—what he did at sea, his administration’s conservation record would have borne favorable comparison to Roosevelt’s. Unfortunately, politics too often intervened and opportunities too often were missed. What might have been cannot erase what actually occurred.

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Florida's intent buy out a giant sugar operation in a move to restore the Everglades is being complicated by a competing offer from the Lawrence Group, a Tennessee farming company.

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In June 2007, Ecuador offered to avoid oil development in a tract of biodiverse rainforest if other nations and green groups were able to pony up $350 million a year for a decade. Reaction to the pay-to-protect idea was positive, but a twice-bumped-back deadline is coming up in Dec. 2008, and still no funding is in place. The oil field in question lies within Yasuni National Park, home to many endangered flora and fauna, and is officially designated as an "untouchable zone" that is supposed to be a safe haven for reclusive indigenous tribes. Says Huaorani tribe member Penti Baihua, "If the oil companies destroy all of the Yasuni, where will we live?"

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The roughly $10 billion restoration of the Everglades is "making scant progress toward achieving its goals" due to built-in bureaucracy, funding troubles, and more, according to a report from the National Research Council. The report paints a bleak picture of federal and state rescue efforts, which together comprise the largest ecosystem restoration project in history. Of the rescue plan's more than 60 components, not one has been completed yet. As it stands, "it appears that planning rather than doing, reporting rather than constructing, and administering rather than restoring are consuming [state and federal workers'] talents and time," the report says. In short, it's long past time for action. If the plan's many flaws aren't addressed soon, "the Everglades ecosystem may experience irreversible losses to its character and functioning." Florida's plan to buy 187,000 acres of sugar-industry land in the Everglades to help restore water flows is a noble effort, the report says, but benefits from it won't be seen for at least a decade and the Everglades need action now in order to be saved.

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Nobel Peace Prize winners Al Gore and Wangari Maathai urged United Nations countries on Monday to pay special attention to tropical deforestation in their next international climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Preserving forests, they said, will help local communities, fight poverty, and may substantially slow global warming since deforestation accounts for about one-fifth of the world's greenhouse-gas emissions. "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said ... injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And in that same sense we live in a new reality in which increased CO2 emissions anywhere represent a threat to civilization everywhere," Gore said. "One of the most effective things that we can do in the near term to reduce the emissions of global-warming pollution is to halt this totally unnecessary deforestation." Gore and Maathai appealed especially to the United States for leadership on climate and deforestation issues, saying the U.S. should lead the world in international funding for helping forests and should also include forest preservation programs in any domestic climate legislation it passes.

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When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announced in June that the state would buy 187,000 acres of land from U.S. Sugar Corp. to "jump start" an Everglades restoration effort, environmentalists cheered visions of flowing, fresh water and pristine, untouched habitat. But that may not turn out to be exactly the case. Crist initially said he would use the land to build a flow way between Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades, quenching the thirsty River of Grass with water untainted by phosphorus from sugar production. But for that plan to go forward, the state will also have to obtain 40,000 acres owned by a subsidiary of sugar behemoth Florida Crystals. Since the flow way would require less land than what Crist is buying from U.S. Sugar, many expect that the state will orchestrate a swap with Florida Crystals instead of taking the land out of production. Closed-door negotiations are ongoing. Meanwhile, a Florida Crystals spokesperson says the company has cleaned up its act and is not the Everglades' nemesis, as most phosphorus pollution in the region now comes from non-sugar sources.

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Cameroon and Nigeria will partner up to protect the world's most endangered gorilla under an agreement facilitated by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Only some 300 Cross River gorillas remain, all of which live only in those two Central African countries. Gorilla gorilla diehli is threatened by illegal logging, agricultural conversion of its habitat, and poaching for the bushmeat trade. Cameroon and Nigeria will work to increase monitoring of the gorillas, educate and involve surrounding communities in conservation, and improve law enforcement.

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Ecuador's environment will be given inalienable rights if residents of that country vote yes Sept. 28 on a referendum to overhaul the constitution. One of the draft document's 444 articles gives nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution." The controversial constitution, which would greatly extend the power of leftist President Rafael Correa, would also give the state more control over Ecuador's mining and oil industries.

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The U.S. EPA has vetoed a giant, expensive plan to build the world's largest water pump in the Mississippi River delta. The so-called Yazoo Pump flood-control project would have sucked 6 million gallons of water a minute from 67,000 acres of wetlands along the Yazoo River. The scheme, proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and first authorized by Congress in 1941, would have cost $220 million. The EPA concluded that maybe, just maybe, sucking all that wet out of the wetlands would have been damaging to fish, wildlife, and migratory birds. "The EPA truly deserves our thanks for killing this unnecessary and economically wasteful Corps of Engineers project," says the Sierra Club's Ed Hopkins. "The natural, and free, flood protections offered by these wetlands are far more effective than an expensive pumping project." Today's veto was only the 12th time since 1972 that the EPA has put the kibosh on a Corps project; the last was in 1990.

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Sumatra's Tesso Nilo National Park will be doubled in size in an effort to help out the endangered elephants and tigers that live there. Riau province, which contains the park, houses some 210 elephants (down from 1,250 just a quarter-century ago) and 192 tigers (down from 650 in that same time period). Sixty to 80 elephants and some 50 tigers are believed to reside in Tesso Nilo. The park also has the most biodiverse highland forest plant life on earth, with some 4,000 recorded unique species. The expansion of the park to 212,500 acres "is a momentous decision that offers hope for some of the planet's most spectacular wildlife and forests," says Carter Roberts of WWF. "There is still much to do, however, as Sumatra's forests continue to disappear to feed the growing global demand for pulp, paper, and palm oil." Riau lost 11 percent of its forest cover in just one year between 2005 and 2006, and has 65 percent less forest cover than it did in the early 1980s.

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Remember when President Bush designated the world's largest protected marine area in Hawaii in 2006? Environmentalists cheered, fish clapped their fins, and Bush aides crossed "burnish green reputation" off the presidential to-do list -- but the aftermath has been underwhelming. Tons of debris drift into the 140,000-square-mile Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument each year, posing a great threat to marine life. But the same year that Bush declared the area a monument and banned trash within it, the administration slashed the cleanup budget for the area by 80 percent. Before the monument designation, an average 102 tons of junk were collected each year; since then, debris removal has fallen to about 35 tons a year. While the lack of follow-through is frustrating (if expected), one Hawaii resident notes that blame is widespread: "We can pick up plastic off the beach from now until the end of time, but unless people stop putting it in the ocean our problem will never go away."

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Florida and the U.S. EPA have been skewered by a federal judge for their Everglades cleanup efforts (or rather, lack thereof). In 2003, Florida pushed back a deadline for reducing phosphorus pollution in the River of Grass from 2006 to 2016. By doing so, the state "violated its fundamental commitment and promise to protect the Everglades," U.S. District Judge Alan Gold ruled Tuesday. He also turned his Gavel of Shame on the EPA, saying the agency violated the Clean Water Act by not holding Florida to its deadline. The EPA turned a "blind eye" in concluding that the delay meant no change in water-quality standards, said Gold, and was "patently wrong and acted arbitrarily and capriciously." The ruling forces the EPA to review Florida's water-pollution standards for the Everglades and determine whether they pass federal muster.

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A giant tract of land in southeastern British Columbia will become protected habitat, the Canadian government and Nature Conservancy Canada announced Thursday. The so-called Darkwoods area, purchased from a private forester, adds up to 550 square kilometers of mountains, valleys, and wetlands (that's 212 square miles, for metric-system hatas). The area is home to endangered mountain caribou, grizzly bears, bull trout, red-tailed chipmunks, and 100,000 migratory birds of 265 different species. The Canadian government and the Nature Conservancy Canada jointly paid $125 million to both purchase the land and pay into an endowment fund to ensure the area continues to be protected in the future. "Darkwoods is a conservation initiative of global significance," says the Nature Conservancy's John Lounds. "It's part of a greater vision that will set new standards for conservation success."

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The Canadian province of Ontario will permanently protect a gigantic swath of boreal forest in what green group ForestEthics says is the largest conservation deal in Canada's history and one of the top three forest protection initiatives anywhere, evah. Some 225,000 square kilometers of trees -- that's more than 86,800 square miles in American -- will be kept safe from resource exploration and development. The conservation commitment applies to nearly half of Ontario's boreal forest, which houses more than 200 species of wildlife and sucks up nearly 13.8 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. "It's unspoiled and undisturbed, and if there's one thing we know for sure, it's not going to stay that way forever unless we do something," said Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, adding, "We need to prepare for development and plan for it. It's our responsibility as global citizens to get this right, and to act now." Wow, foresight! How very refreshing.

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Some 500 square miles of privately owned forest in the northern Rocky Mountains will be protected under a deal announced Monday by the Nature Conservancy and Trust for Public Land. The groups will pay Plum Creek Timber $510 million for the checkerboard tracts of land in northwest Montana. The deal is "the largest land purchase, for conservation purposes, in American history," says Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). The purchase will create a more continuous habitat for wildlife, including grizzly bears, lynx, moose, wolverines, and bull trout, and keep developers at bay; Plum Creek will be allowed to continue sustainable timber harvest in some areas. Baucus was instrumental in the deal, having successfully added a tax-credit bond mechanism to the recently passed farm bill that allows nonprofits to apply for federal grants for conservation land purchases. Half of the $510 million will be available through the Baucus provision, and the rest will be raised through donations.

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