The White House openly states there is no “quick fix” for the price of oil however starting now can help in the future. More politicians are openly expressing their support for allowing offshore drilling and exploration.
This week, typical of of the Bush administration’s ineptitude, the EPA decided to take no new action on global warming emissions. Republican California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger slammed the Bush administration’s decision to not take action as further evidence it did not believe in global warming.
From the administration that brought you:
* A weakened Clean Air Act
* A weakened Clean Water Act
* A weakened dollar
* An unjust war
* An increase in logging contracts
* Strained international relations
* The border fence
*And much, much (MUCH), more…
Now brings you:
*A solution to floods and fires
For the 5th time in history, the House Natural Resources committee invoked its authority and ordered the Bush administration to stop mining claims in the Grand Canyon. The measure was urged by Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva of Tucson, chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands.
The withdrawal halts thousands of mining claims in national forest areas surrounding the Grand Canyon amid fears that resumption of uranium mining presents [...]
It struck me today that our fearless leaders, would-be’s, and corporate giants seem to think we’re all a bunch of rubes gathered outside a carnival sideshow, leaning on the barker’s every word.
Urging Congress to lift its ban on offshore oil and gas drilling, our fearless leader, you know, President Bush, told lawmakers, “There is no excuse for delay“.
It got worse, “Families across the country are looking to Washington for a response.” Gimme a break.
I was appalled and shocked to read that President Bush is proposing to take $70 million from the $180 million salmon disaster relief funds included in the farm bill to pay for the census. My family is supported by commercial fishing, and following a poor dungeness crab season, fisherman along the West Coast are really hurting financially. Many captains can’t afford to make their boat payments, let alone their mortgages and skyrocketing fuel prices. Taking money from salmon fisherman equates to taking money from food stamps programs to fund the census. People’s livelihoods are at stake, and West Coast representatives and governors are reeling at Bush’s suggestion.
Why do we need more money for the census? The money is needed because of a failed contract with the Harris Corporation for the 2010 counts. The Census Bureau had planned to use handheld computers, but the Florida-based contractor went over budget. Now, we have to return to a paper-based census, which will cost taxpayers more money. Instead of trying to take money from fisherman to pay for a failed contract, shouldn’t we reevaluate the census itself? Is it really necessary to complete this population count every ten years? Could we modify the count to every 15 or 20 years?
West Coast governors and congress men/women are upset at Bush’s proposal. In an angry letter to the president, Democrats Mike Thompson, Peter DeFazio, Darlene Hooley, Anna Eshoo, Jim McDermott, Brian Baird, Doris Matsui, Lois Capps, Lynn Woolsey, Earl Blumenauer, David Wu, Rick Larson, Sam Farr and Jay Inslee wrote:
This proposal is especially egregious when you consider that your administration’s water policies on all of the Pacific Northwest’s major salmon rivers are the reason this disaster funding is needed in the first place. These failed policies have resulted in over 80,000 dead adult salmon in the Klamath River, record low returns to the Sacramento and Columbia/Snake River systems, two fishery disaster declarations issued by the Secretary of Commerce and two years of fishing closures impacting thousands of families and small business.
My family is supported by commercial fishing (dungeness crab and king salmon), which is kind of ironic since I am a vegetarian. For the second time in recent years, there will be no salmon season in California. Last year’s season lasted only four days, and the year before that was a complete closure due to the Klamath River. The collapse of the Klamath salmon population was due to Bush’s water diversion policies, that were implemented to get a Republican elected in Oregon. This year’s Sacramento River collapse is also the result of Bush administration decisions, which were followed up by lies to cover up the true source of the problem.
As has happened repeatedly throughout the Bush administration, scientists have been forced to mislead the public about the true cause of the Sacramento fisheries crisis. Government scientists claim that low ocean food supply is the cause of the collapse, whereas independent scientists cite water diversion from the delta as the biggest culprit. Rep. George Miller (D) Martinez explained:
They changed the science, the conclusion of the scientists and what we see now is we’ve closed the entire Pacific fisheries to salmon and the salmon are much more endangered now than they were five, six, seven, 10 years ago.
Headlines from today’s White House press conference included a quote from President Bush encouraging Americans to eat local. It caught me a bit off guard.
Putting the comment back into context, however, there are a few problems with the logic of this suggestion, and not just that he, Bush, was the creator of the “eat local” concept.
The statement was made in response to a question on the relationship between ethanol and food price increases: (quote from press conference after the jump).
When you think of Americans who have done a lot for Climate Change, current president George W. Bush doesn’t spring to mind. The guy he beat for the current spot, Al Gore, definitely springs to mind; I like to think of GBW as the anti-Gore.
Over the past week rumors and rumblings about a climate plan underway in the current and fading Whitehouse have emerged. Thankfully, it all seems a bit “disappointing.”
Seventeen nations have come together in Paris for two days in the latest round of climate warming talks, under the heading of the Major Emitters Meeting. The South African delegation was the one to label Bush’s proposals – to halt a rise in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 – as disappointing. “There is no way whatever that we can agree to what the U.S. is proposing,” South African Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said in a statement.
The US government likes to declare war on issues in which there are no clear enemies, while physically fighting undeclared wars against foreign people. President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. President Richard Nixon declared war on cancer and recreational drugs. Will George W. Bush declare war on climate change?
Tim Hurst wrote, “I would argue that the only opportunity the current president has to leave a positive and lasting legacy is to take ownership of the climate change and global warming issue” in response to rumors that Bush supports a new climate proposal. Could this be Bush’s declaration of war on climate change? I hope not, as the United States has failed to previously win a war on cancer, poverty, or drugs, and these wars have gone on for decades. We don’t have decades to solve the problem of climate change; we must do it now. Of course, when Bush is involved, I have to be skeptical of his true intentions, especially when the Associate Press reports the Bush administration is motivated to avoid a “train wreck” of climate change regulations. I suspect the Bush climate policy would be a watered down version of these other regulations, besides the White House may already be retreating on the issue.
We are all feeling the prices at the pump and the ramifications of increased oil prices throughout our economy, so why are the big oil companies still making record profits? Not only are these big oil companies reaping in record amounts of money while consumers suffer, they are also still receiving federal subsidies. What’s up with that?
Personally, I don’t understand how the oil companies can justify passing the entire burden off on the American people of the rising cost of gasoline considering our current economic recession. Exxon Mobil Corp., BP America Inc., Shell Oil Co., Chevron Corp., and ConocoPhillip know high fuel prices are hurting consumers, but on Tuesday they defended their profits of $123 billion last year as in line with other industries. “Our earnings, though high in absolute terms, need to be viewed in the context of the scale and cyclical, long-term nature of our industry as well as the huge investment requirements,” said J.S. Simon, Exxon Mobil’s senior vice president.
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