By taking environmental policymaking away from scientists, and turning it over to industry cronies, Bush has made a mockery of the nation's environmental laws and values.
Bush's myriad environmental sins could have him serving penance for years. But we decided to highlight seven of his most deadly. We also invited leading environmentalists to outline Barack Obama's mission for cleaning up the nation's land, water and air.
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This story loses points because of it's strong anti-Bush bias. The entire piece is framed as 'Bush Sin" vs 'Obama Mission', and the sources are nearly all pro-environment activists. Framing is important, and this piece could have conveyed a lot of the same information without coming off as so obviously pro-Obama.
This provides a point-by-point enumeration of the Bush administration's eight-year program for desecrating the environment and turning all natural resources left in the USA over to industrial cronies for rapacious profiteering. On the up-side, it also lists strong, point-by-point countermeasures for the new administration to help undo some of the damage, and prevent further desecration of our land, water, and air.
Of all the problems we face today, none is more important--or urgent--than protecting the global environment. Bush 43 is rushing to sell leases for mining uranium in the most prized and pristine lands in the West: the Grand Canyon national park, Arches National Park, and other vital wilderness areas. Moreover, these wilderness areas drain into the Colorado River, which provides water for animals, people, and food crops from Utah to Mexico, most notably Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Los ... More »
Author developed a list of seven of Bush's environmental acts that placed corporate interests above the environment and human health. Some interviews were conducted with environmentalists but there was no rationale provided on how the seven 'sins' were selected. The format of listing Bush’s environmental sins combined with an environmentalist’s position on the sin followed by steps that can be taken by Obama was interesting. I would have like more sources for each sin. The majority of the sins dealt with global warming, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution with no mention on environmental justice issues, contaminated soil and groundwater, and mining practices.
For the last 8 years we have seen our public resources sold to the highest bidder with little consideration to the impact to the environment and at the same time the EPA was controlled not by scientists but by White House staff. It will be interesting to see who Obama selects to head the EPA, Dept of the Interior, FDA, etc. and how much pressure is put on him by industry.
The author is absolutely correct about the seven environmental sins committed by the Bush administration. But the personal biased interjections between the points severely dilutes the story’s effectiveness
The framing of "Seven Deadly Sins" weakens the story. To make the numerology work, the author has to stretch for seven distinct failures. The article would work better if the author simply enumerated the major Administration failures, starting with the largest. Which is certainly not their refusal to agree to mandatory reductions: this would never have passed Congress in Bush's first 6 years, and probably not in his last two. The counterposition of the "Obama Mission" segments is weak as well. These segments would have benefited from some political realism. I'm not sure Congress has the teeth for any of these things.
This is not quality. The writer starts off with 'quotes' from thinking polar bears, uses phrases such as "couldn't be bothered", "cronies", "They don't call it"(where 'they' is unspecified) etc. This is the type of writing that I had hoped to get away from by registering on this site.
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