Thursday, August 12, 2004
Bush breaks environmental promise
By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
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By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of a democracy. One is to look at how much the public is included in community decision-making. Another is to evaluate access to justice.
The most telling aspect of a government, however, is how it distributes the goods of the land. Does it safeguard the commonwealth -- the public trust assets -- on behalf of the public? Or does it allow the shared wealth of our communities to be stolen from the public by corporate power?
The environmental laws passed after Earth Day 1970 were designed to protect the commons -- those shared resources that cannot be reduced to private property, including the air, flowing water, public lands, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.
Since then, life has improved dramatically in the United States. Children have measurably less lead in their blood and therefore greater IQ levels. We breathe cleaner air in cities and parks, swim in cleaner water in lakes and rivers.
These laws have protected the stratospheric ozone layer, reduced acid rain, saved threatened wildlife such as the bald eagle, and preserved some of the last remaining wild places that make this country so beautiful. In other words, they protect the parts of the United States that we all hold in common.
But George W. Bush's policy advisers somehow don't see the benefits we've received from our investments in America's environmental infrastructure. All they see is the cost of compliance to their campaign contributors -- a group that is led by
the nation's most egregious polluters.
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