Environment

	CAP: Ask the Expert – The Environment and the State of the Union
	CAP: CAP's Bracken Hendricks on Climate Change & Energy Policy
	CAP: Perino on Earth Day

"I think we have a problem on global warming. I think there is a debate about whether it’s caused by mankind or whether it’s caused naturally, but it’s a worthy debate. It’s a debate, actually, that I’m in the process of solving."

- President Bush to People Magazine, 7/6/06

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found in 2007:

The Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.

Under President Bush, conservatives handed the country’s energy and environmental policies over to oil and gas companies to make decisions. In 2005, the Washington Post obtained White House documents proving secret meetings between Exxon Mobil, Conoco, Shell and BP and Vice President Cheney’s 2001 energy task force to provide “detailed energy policy recommendations.”

The White House censored climate change scientists, and instead used Big Oil’s recommendations to provide tax cuts for oil companies with record profits, and relaxed standards for fuel efficiency and carbon emissions.

When George W. Bush entered office, energy-related US emissions were 5.709 billion metric tons. By 2006, emissions had jumped 168 million metric tons. It’s no wonder then why conservatives have made concerted efforts to avoid global leadership on climate change. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol, and skipped the 2002 Earth Summit meeting and 2007 UN meeting on global warming. He stalled G-8 global warming proposals in Scotland in 2005 and Germany in 2007.

Conservatives have proposed legislation that weakens standards for pollutants that cause acid rain and smog, blocked drinking water health standards for arsenic, and signed legislation allowing water pollution from livestock farms’ animal waste. They also allowed for increased logging in national forests – legislation that helped spur the record wildfires in 2006 and 2007.

But conservatives in the Bush Administration will perhaps be best known for their dogmatic efforts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. During his 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush urged oil drilling in the arctic. Congress blocked efforts to drill in ANWR in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Bush has recently renewed his call to drill in Alaska, claiming that it would lower record gas prices – even though the Department of Energy found it would not have an impact.

In April, President Bush outlined a new global warming plan calling for a “national goal” to halt the growth of US carbon emissions by 2025. Even Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out, “For him to say we should start really reducing greenhouse gases by the year 2025, by that time we’ll have no more glacier left.”