Governor Of Texas George W Bush example essay topic

Before the current administration was allowed to take office, the environment may not have been perfect, but due to years of ongoing legislation it was slowly getting better. With numerous agencies to protect the air, water, wilderness, and ozone layer against the majority of harmful devices that industry and civilization has created, we were finally gaining ground on something that is worth protecting, our environment. We had begun to learn that not everything should be up for grabs in our world and that not al 1 things are meant to be left to their own accord. There is a time and a place to protect the unprotected and save our environment. Of course, all of these safeguards are slowly becoming unraveled by our current President, George W. Bush. First, to fully understand Bush's complete disregard for the environment, we must take note of where he came from.

At age two George W. Bush moved from his birth place, New Haven, Connecticut, to Midland, Texas where he was to grow up around the oil business. After attending Yale and Harvard, Bush returned to Texas and attempted starting his own oil company. Although his father had made millions in the oil field bush junior did not fair quite as well. Even though he had an exorbitant amount of money given to him from old family friends and deep pocketed investors hoping for political gains in George Bush seniors' administration, he never seemed able to gain any momentum in this enterprise. In 1978, Bush lost his attempt to win a Congressional election, immediately returning to the oil field to try once more.

Once again, thanks to low barrel prices, he failed and had to turn to deep pockets to bail him out. It wasn't until 1991 when the Persian Gulf emirate of Bahrain struck a deal with Bush's oil corporation, Harken, that he had any good fortune in the oil business. There were many that believed this was most likely due to his father's involvement in foreign affairs in Saudi Arabia. Of course, as Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose reports, this was ultimately denied by both Bush junior and Bush senior. You can be assured this was not the one and only time a Bush administration would use government for its own self interests.

After numerous attempts in the oil trade, the only real accomplishment for George W. Bush was spending millions of dollars for investors in his failing companies. It is also suggested by Ivins and Dubose that these investors may have been looking for more than just an investment, most of these ventures were made during the time when George Bush senior was running for either president or serving as Ronald Reagan's vice-president. In 1994 George W. Bush became Governor and offered the people of Texas, in his words, "my version of a modern-day revolution". Although he had an excellent view on transforming the Texas educational system he never spoke of what was to become of their environmental issues; this was for good reason. The North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation stated that Texas had more pollution than any other state, including both air and water pollution.

During Bush's reign he disbanded those appointed to the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission and selected his own version of environmentalist for these positions. The first commissioner of the three person commission was John Baker, from the Texas Farm Bureau; an agency which in the past has consistently opposed any effort to control the use of pesticides. The second commissioner was to be Ralph Marquez, a former employee of a chemical company and a lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council. And finally, Barry McBee, a middle aged lawyer straight from the Christian right. Ivins and Dubose also emphasized how these appointees had spent thousands of dollars opposing the new federal air-quality standards enacted in 1997. After serving as Governor of Texas George W. Bush turned his attention towards the presidency.

After a highly debated win in 2000, thanks to the Supreme Court, George W. Bush became our 43rd president. Without addressing this controversial win, one must take note of the sources from which his campaign gained its momentum. Environmental News Networks staff reporter, Margot Higgins, illustrates this with her research of the $314 million that was raised by the Bush campaign and the Republican National Party; 80 percent of which came from corporations or people working for them. Higgins confirms industries unanimous backing of Bush in an article that takes note of Bush's ability to raise more money than Al Gore in every sector, excluding labor. Mother Jones. com points out how the agriculture industry alone contributed $2.6 million to Bush's campaign, which is more than 10 times the amount collected by Gore's campaign. When asked why Pennsylvania's largest lumber mill donated $157,750, their CEO and president, Galen We aber, responded, "I want to protect a way of life that is fast disappearing".

The question now is whether these contributions are paying off for those that donated so much. To answer the question above, yes it is. Bush's stance on the use of public lands quickly portrayed the will of his industry buddies. On January 20, 2001 President Bush began paying pack industry by stalling an initiative meant to protect the few remaining areas of National Forests from installing roads in areas deemed wilderness areas. Craig Welch and Hal Bert on of Seattle Times insist that, without this ban, over 58.5 million acres of public land could become decimated due to traffic, logging, mining or exploration for more energy resources. In addition to building roads in National Forests, Bush has also proposed easier legislation for thinning out the federal forests.

This would yet again allow the logging industry another source to tap into. While Sierra Club has been keeping tabs on President Bush's time in office, they have found a further blow to Federal Forests which came on February 25, 2002 when lead-mining exploration in Missouri's Mark Twain National forest was approved. This allowed for 223 holes to be drilled, leaving the possibility of water contamination throughout southeastern Missouri. In a campaign speech given by George Bush, he states, "We will link debt reduction and the conservation of tropical forests" [, because, ] " these forests' affect the air we breathe, the food we eat, medicines that cure disease, and are home to more than half of earth's animal and plant species". With this speech he pledged to invest $100 million a year in rain forest conservation. Since coming into office, Bush has yet to implement this promise.

Besides all of these problems Bush has proposed cutting back spending for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup programs by 10 percent, reports Anita Huslin of the Washington Post. He has also proposed lifting the current ban on snowmobiles using National Parks, has proposed selling leases for offshore oil and gas enterprises in the Beaufort Sea, off Alaska's coastline, and to top it all off believes we should drill for oil in Alaska's wilderness. George W. Bush has never quibbled on his belief that Alaska was made for us to drill into. Bush states in a panel on a NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, "Today, we import a million barrels a day from Saddam Hussein. I would rather that a million come from our own hemisphere, our own country", and again later in the same interview responds with, "One of the big debates that's taking place in Congress, or will take place in the Congress is whether or not we should be exploring for natural gas in Alaska - for example, in ANWR. I strongly think we should".

This Bush rhetoric can be heard through his appointment to Interior Secretary, Gale Norton, "The ANWR is simply not just a place to drill oil, it is the largest potential domestic source of oil". This is the prevalent belief among the Bush Administration even though the head of the EPA, Sen. Barbara Boxer has made it clear, if we required all light trucks and SUV's to meet the same efficiency standards as regular automobiles within seven years we would save the same amount of oil that we would find in the Arctic. There is no doubt he will use every means possible to tap into that untapped resource, but what would one expect from an ex-oil corporation CEO? As well as his lacking efforts to save public land from industries harm he has also retracted previous administration's efforts to our air quality although this had began while he was still governor of Texas.

Across the nation, all refineries and chemical and power plants built before 1971 were exempted from new federal regulations mandating cleaner air regulations. The majority of these plants had since become outdated and replaced with newer updated versions meeting federal guidelines. In Texas during Bush's reign in office, over 700 of these out-of-date plants were still in operation. His answer was to pass legislation allowing these industries to voluntarily reduce emissions. After three years, only 104 facilities participated and of those only 19 met clean air standards.

The Public Research Works and the Center for Responsive Politics, two separate campaign-finance watchdog groups, reported that the companies that helped Bush put together this legislation gave a total of $260,648 to his 1998 gubernatorial campaign and $243,900 to his presidential campaign. Another fiasco was Bush's attempt to cut down the amount of pollution caused by automobiles. To fix this massive amount of pollution Bush instated yet another voluntary law. This allowed motorist to voluntarily test their vehicles for excessive emissions.

Texas signed a contract with Tejas Testing Technology and began testing. Soon after the state reversed its decision to test automobiles and broke the contract with the testing company. Tejas Testing Technology sued Texas for $200 million, and eventually settled for $140 million. The funds used were taken from a variety of environmental programs; $41 million from the Clean Air account, $63.6 million out of the Petroleum Storage Tank Remediation Fund, $20 million out of Hazardous Solid Waste Remediation, and the remaining out of general revenue fund.

Well I wonder what took the brunt of that massive mistake - yes just another jab at environmental efforts in Texas. Currently, the Bush administration is working to undermine legislation with more voluntary standards; you would think he would remember this not working in Texas. Instead, they chose to weaken the New Source Review program (NSR), which is a rider of the Clean Air Act. This program was meant to force factories to install modern pollution equipment any time they made an upgrade to increase energy output. The loopholes created would allow factories to voluntarily determine their pollution output and increase energy output with no modern pollution controls, even though this increase in energy output would inevitably increase the amount of pollution. Former vice-president candidate Joseph Lieberman believes the new rules give industry "virtual free rein to increase their emissions [... ] without any foresight from the government".

Senator Lieberman is certainly not the only person that has noticed the efforts of the Bush administration to disassemble the Clean Air Act. Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, believes "It's a major weakening of standards [... ] the EPA has no calculations on increased pollution or public health impacts". Is any of this a surprise? Certainly not, ranking fifth in 2000 for highest toxic releases was Texas, and this was while Bush was still governor. John Heilprin from the Associated Press takes note that in 2000, the last year of Bush's governorship of Texas, they released 301.5 million pounds of toxic contamination.

When people can not breathe then they won't need to drink the water either, right? Well this must be, because in addition to removing the safeguards for clean air, Bush is also making water less safe to drink. It is very well documented that arsenic is a cancer causing substance, often as a result from the mining industry depositing chemicals into the ground which then seep into the water. The EPA Administrator, Christie Todd Whitman, seems to believe this is not an issue that must be resolved as quickly as possible. She has delayed a rule that was supposed to take effect on March 23, 2001 and would restrict the amount of arsenic that could be found in tap water. Instead of a new rule regulating arsenic taking effect on March 23, a Federal Register notified the public of the Department of Interior's intent on suspending a rule that would require mining companies to ensure the protection of water from contamination during and after their use of the land.

Is this yet just another coincidence? According to Ken R amer, during Bush's reign as governor, Texas had over 140 lakes or streams that did not meet water quality standards, meaning they either were closed or had problems for marine life. According to a 1997 E.P.A. report, Texas was one of only seven states that were not allowed to have control over its own Federal Water Pollution Permit program, otherwise known as National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (Nip des). One may ask, what's left for the president to destroy? The answer is the ozone.

Instead of doing what a good president would do and try and save it, he has decided to continue allowing industries to pump disastrous chemicals into our environment. This in turn is slowly eating away at the layer that keeps us protected from many of the sun's harmful rays. After taking office, the Bush administration quickly announced it had no intentions of signing the Kyoto global warming treaty, instead they came up with their own ideas for reducing the amount of carbon dioxide intensity. The problem, according to Kelly Sims Gallagher of Foreign Policy in Focus, is that his plan attacks the intensity of emissions, not the quantity of emissions. His plan would reduce the intensity of emissions to 151 metric tons per million dollars of GDP by 2012, reducing the intensity by 17.4%, yet total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would rise by 13.6%. By my estimation, that is only a decline of 3.8% in 10 years, far from his promise to decline emissions by 18%.

In addition, there are three new pollution targets being emitted from power plants that Bush intends on attacking. The problem is, by targeting these three pollutants, he will delay currently required emission cuts for mercury and sulfur. This arrangement includes an allowance for three times more toxic mercury and 50 percent more sulfur than current law allows. Additionally, it would allow for hundreds of thousands of tons of nitrogen oxide pollution and impedes the cleanup well beyond what current law tolerates. There have been numerous polls on how people in America feel about President Bush and the different policies he is trying to push. For instance, according to CBS news poll 52% of people believe protecting the environment is very important, while only 32% believe production of energy is important.

Another CBS poll, The Home Front, shows that 50% of Americans believe that Bush's policies favor the rich while only 14% believe they may favor the middle class. In a May 2001 issue of Newsweek, 47% of people believed Bush had no commitment to saving the environment. Can this many people be watching Bush in action and not take notice to his complete disregard for the sanctity of the world we live in? Is it possible for President Bush to ever wake up and smell the air around him, or will he just put a gas mask on, buy bottled water, stay indoors and insist there still isn't a problem?

I sincerely hope there will be someone who can make this madman stop the insanity, the corporate payoffs, and the harm being inflicted upon the environment. We must realize there is but one world for us to live on and we had better start taking care of it soon. I fear if we do not, the beauty of the world as we know it may soon only be seen in the history books. 1. George Bush, A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House (New York: Harper Collins, 1999), 17.2.

Molly Ivins and Lou DuBose, Shrub (New York: Random House, 2000) 29 - 30.3. Ivins and DuBose, 23.4. Bush, A Charge to Keep: My Journey to the White House, 31.5. Ivins and DuBose, 110-112.6. Margot Higgins, "Payback time for Bush - at the expense of environment", ENN. com, 24 April 2001, (18 Nov 2002). 7.

Helene B latter, "Why did farmers and timber companies back the republicans? ", ENN. com, 5 March 2001 (26 Nov. 2002). 8. Craig Welch and Hal Burton, "Bush to delay enacting ban on roads, logging", Seattle times. com, 6 Feb. 2001 (18 Nov. 2002). 9. Matthew Daly, "Bush to Propose Easing Logging Restrictions to Lessen Threat of Wildfires".

ENN. com (AP), 22 Aug. 2002 (26 Nov. 2002). 10. "Keeping tabs On George W. Bush", Sierra Club ongoing, . 11. "Keeping tabs On George W. Bush", 12. Anita Huslin, "Bush Plan cuts Back Cleanup of Bay".

Washington Post 11 April 2001: B 04.13. "Keeping tabs On George W. Bush", 14. George W. Bush, interview with Jim Lehrer, "Bush and the Environment", PBS, Online NewsHour. 29 March 2001 web (18 Nov. 2002).

15. Brad Knickerbocker, "New push to pump oil from Alaska refuge", Christian Science Monitor 26 Nov. 2001 (26 Nov. 2002). 16. George W. Bush, interview with Jim Lehrer, "Bush's Environmental Record", PBS, Online NewsHour 22 Aug. 2000 (18 Nov. 2002).

17. Ivins and DuBose, 115 18. Ivins and DuBose 19. Chris Baltimore, "Bush Administration to Relax Clean Air Rules".

ENN. com (Reuters), 14 June 2002 (18 Nov. 2002) 20. Baltimore 21. John Heilprin, "EPA says biggest polluters are hard-rock mining companies and coal burning power plants". ENN. com (AP) 24 May 2002 (26 Nov. 2002) 22.

"Keeping tabs On George W. Bush", 23. Bush, interview, "Bush's Environmental Record" 24. Ivins and DuBose 25. Kelly Sims Gallagher, "Bush's Hot Air Plan". Earth scape. org. (Foreign Policy in Focus.) 19 Feb. 2002, (20 Nov. 2002) 26.

"Keeping tabs On George W. Bush", 27. "Divided On Drilling", CBSNews. com, 14 Feb. 2001 (18 Nov. 2002) 28. "Poll: The Home Front", CBSNews. com 26 Jan. 2002 (18 Nov. 2002) 29. Kates, Robert W., "Newsweek Poll: Slim Majority Favors Developing New Energy Sources Over Protecting Environment But 48% Oppose Oil Exploration in Protected Wilderness; 47% See No Bush Commitment to Environment". Newsweek, May 2001, (Nov. 18 2002.