Fiddling while the planet burns

No matter which presidential candidate gets elected in November, one can be assured that they will be a vast improvement on the current administration when it comes to having concern for our environment. The Bush-Cheney team seems to go out of its way to not only allow destruction of the environment, but to encourage it. Because, you see, they don't work for you and me, and our children, grandchildren and great-granchildren. They take their marching orders from the big oil companies and the polluters. A case in point was a story that I read in the Washington Post while on vacation. Here's the lead paragraph of the story: "The Bush administration has decided not to take any new steps to regulate greenhouse gas emissions before the president leaves office, despite pressure from the Supreme Court and broad accord among senior federal officials that new regulation is appropriate now." As usual, the administration doesn't care about what some silly court tells it to do, or what even its own experts have to say. Later, the Post story said this: "To defer compliance with the Supreme Court's demand (for action on the pollution issue), the White House has walked a tortured policy path, editing its officials' congressional testimony, refusing to read documents prepared by career employees and approved by top appointees, requesting changes to computer models to lower estimates of the benefits of curbing carbon dioxide, and pushing narrowly drafted legislation on fuel-economy standards that officials said was meant to sap public interest in wider regulatory action." Bush's own Environmental Protection Agency issued a finding last December that global warming exists, beyond doubt, and that there is strong evidence that public welfare is endangered by emissions. The Post also reported that Jason Burnett, a high-ranking EPA official, sent the findings about public endangerment to the White House via e-mail, but the Office of Management and Budget refused to even open the e-mail. Further, the report said that Cheney's office had directed Burnett to prevent EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson from telling Congress that "greenhouse gas emissions harm the environment." Burnett, to his credit, refused. We all should be angered by the obvious disingenuousness and stonewalling by the Bush administration, but really, I guess we should be used to it by now. Where is the outrage? Oh, I forgot, we're more interested in our daily updates on the Pitt-Jolie twins.