VoyForums
[ Show ]
Support VoyForums
[ Shrink ]
VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, [4] ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 22:09:41 04/23/02 Tue
Author: Richard
Author Host/IP: 1Cust254.tnt1.gainesville.fl.da.uu.net / 67.243.7.254
Subject: Why environmentalists (tree huggers) get a bad name

Hi everyone,

I hope this isn't coming off as some sort of Jihad against our friend Al Gore. As you know, I've been watching his debut lately too size up the 2002 campaign strategy. I'm still trying to figure out it based on the limited intel, but what I hear makes me concerned.

Here is a little bit of Al Gore's speech to the on Earth Day to a Tennesse audience:
Our country is only as healthy as the air our children breathe, the water they drink and the earth that they will inherit. But instead of embracing the bipartisan national consensus to improve our environment, the Bush administration has chosen to serve the special interests instead of the public interest and subsidized the obsolete failed approaches of the past instead of choosing the exciting new solutions of the future.

Instead of ensuring that our water is clean to drink, they thought that maybe there wasn't enough arsenic in the drinking water. They actually...

(LAUGHTER)

You remember that--they actually had a proposal to increase the levels that would be permitted. (bolding mine)

Gore Attacks Bush's Environmental Policy


I don't want to get into a long rant about who did what to whom. If you don't remember, I can piece the facts back together again. But President Clinton signed a Presidential Order (PO) the night before leaving office the required public drinking water to contain no more than 10 parts per billion (PPB) of arsenic. The level at that time was 50 PPB and had been the standard since roughly 1948 when it was first established.

After reviewing what this would cost as compared to the benefits, the EPA recommended and President Bush agreed to rescind the order and perform more scientific research. The EPA noted that some areas of the country had high levels and could possibly benefit from improved public drinking water standards.

If any of you have read Michael Kinsley, you know he is no supporter of conservative thought. But soon thereafter, he wrote an article agreeing with President Bush. Here is just part of it:


The trouble is that Bush is right about arsenic. How it happened one can only imagine . . .

More likely, Bush stumbled or was blindsided into this heroic and correct application of his own principles. Whatever, 10 parts per billion clearly is overregulation. As Sebastian Mallaby noted in a column last month [op-ed, March 5], the cost of meeting the tougher standard exceeds the likely benefit even by the government's own calculations.

Bush Is Right On Arsenic. Darn!


So what we have here is a replay of the same campaigning style that got Gore in trouble in the last election. Not really a lie, but he certainly is playing very loose with the truth. Do you remember who invented the internet? How about how much his grandmother paid for prescription drugs? But what's worse is he uses demagoguery to exploit a political issue to the detriment of good public policy.

As someone who is concerned about meeting our needs for growth and protecting our natural resources, this political style concerns me very much. It's great material for one liners on talk shows. And I'm sure this nonsense makes the rounds of Democratic strategy sessions. But it is death to good environmental policy.

And this is why I feel environmentalists get a bad name. They are spurred on by political activism and not a true sense of environmentalism.


Any thoughts?


Richard

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Post a message:
This forum requires an account to post.
[ Create Account ]
[ Login ]
[ Contact Forum Admin ]

Forum timezone: GMT-5
VF Version: 3.00b, ConfDB:
Before posting please read our privacy policy.
VoyForums(tm) is a Free Service from Voyager Info-Systems.
Copyright © 1998-2019 Voyager Info-Systems. All Rights Reserved.