President Bush signs Wetlands ActPosted on 01/09/2003 7:03:56 PM PST by Uncle Bill
President Bush signs Wetlands Act
The Democrat.com
By James L. Cummins
January 7, 2002
President George W. Bush recently signed into law the reauthorization of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act. It's purpose is to encourage voluntary partnerships among public agencies and the private sector to conserve North American wetland ecosystems. It establishes an infrastructure and provides a source of funding to accomplish that end. The Act funds the protection, restoration, management and enhancement of a wetland ecosystem to benefit wetland-dependent wildlife.
According to President Bush, "Today we take important action to conserve North America's wetlands, which will help keep our water clean and help provide habitat for hundreds of species of wildlife. Through this legislation, the federal government will continue its partnership with landowners, conservation groups and states to save and improve millions of acres of wetlands. The North American Wetlands Conservation Reauthorization Act shows our concern for the environment and our respect for future generations of Americans. "With this signature today, the North American Wetlands Conservation Act will be reauthorized for five years. The law authorizes federal money to match donations from sportsmen, state wildlife agencies, conservationists and landowners. Since 1991, more than $462 million in federal grants have helped to encourage $1.3 billion in contributions from others."
"Together these funds have restored streams and rivers, re-established native plants and trees, acquired land that is home to more than a third of America's threatened and endangered species. Because about 75 percent of the wetlands are held privately, we need to encourage cooperation with our landowners. This legislation shows that when government, landowners and conservationists work together, we can make dramatic progress in preserving the beauty and the quality of our environment." Bush also thanked the Congress for supporting this legislation.
Proposed projects are ranked by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's North American Wetlands Conservation Council. Selected, prioritized proposals are recommended to the Migratory Bird Conservation Commission for consideration of funding. Membership consists of the Secretary of the Interior, who serves as Chairman; the Secretaries of Transportation and Agriculture; two Members of the Senate (one is Senator Thad Cochran); and two Members of the House of Representatives. The Commission is authorized to approve, reject or reorder the priority of the proposed projects.
Bush Administration Keeps Clinton Wetlands Rule
Bush Supports Clinton Land Grab
Cooked Climate Numbers - Thomas Sowell
Limbaugh excoriates Bush on global warming
George W. Algore (Say's Rush Limbaugh, Political issue for leftists)
LIMBAUGH RIPS BUSH WHITE HOUSE OVER GLOBAL WARMING 'FLIP-FLOP'
Rush: Fleischer Flips Back, White House Realigns With EPA Warning Report
Is he now Global Warming Bush? - Cal Thomas
White House defends U-turn on global warming
U-TURN: BUSH ADMIN OUTLINES 'GLOBAL WARMING' EFFECTS ON AMERICA; ACKNOWLEDGES DAMAGE
BUSH DISMISSES OWN ADMINISTRATION REPORT ON 'WARMING'
Bush Administration Blames Humans for Global Warming
Press Briefing - June 5, 2002
"Q Ari, if I could change subjects for a second. This morning you said that the President quoted a speech, indicating that the President believes that human activity is largely responsible for the increase in greenhouse gases. But I'm wondering if he also agrees with an EPA report which indicated that human activity is likely the cause of global warming?
MR. FLEISCHER: Let me just read from the President's statement of June 11th on global warming, and let me read from the recent report the EPA submitted to the United Nations. And I think you'll hear that on the key issues, they really sound very, very similar. This is the President on June 11th in the Rose Garden, in a speech where he announced his global warming policies.
"Concentration of greenhouse gases, especially C02, have increased substantially since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And the National Academy of Sciences indicate that the increase is due in large part to human activity." That's the President himself speaking.
Here is from the report, page 4, that was just submitted to the United States by the EPA: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as the result of human activities, causing global mean surface temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise. While the changes observed over the last several decades are due most likely to human activities, we cannot rule out that some significant part is also a reflection of natural variability." And I think what you're hearing is the same thing.
Q I'm glad you make the connection explicitly, since the President addressed greenhouse gases, but not specifically global warming. Does the President agree with the conclusion that human activity is likely the cause of global warming?
MR. FLEISCHER: That's what the President said in his speech in June.
Q That's not exactly what he said. He does agree with it?
MR. FLEISCHER: When the President cites the National Academy of Science as saying that the National Academy of Science indicates that the increase is due in large part to human activity, I don't know how the President could say it more specifically than that.
Q He hasn't changed his mind at all?
MR. FLEISCHER: No. Here's -- the bottom line for the President is, number one, he has made a proposal that he believes is a proposal that not only can reduce the problem of greenhouse gases and global warming, but also protects the American economy, so the American economy can lead the world in technological and scientific advances that also have an effect in reducing pollution.
The President has said, citing the National Academy of Sciences, that the increase is due in large part to human activity. The President has also continued, citing both, now this report the EPA has sent to the United Nations, previous evidence from the National Academy of Sciences, that there's uncertainty -- and the recent report notes that there is considerable uncertainty. That's the state of science, and the President agrees with it. I don't think people dispute that.
Q Its uncertainty, but he can still draw that conclusion, that --
MR. FLEISCHER: He didn't June 11th.
Q He didn't exactly do it, but you're saying it now.
MR. FLEISCHER: Again, when the President cites a report by the National Academy of Sciences that indicates the increase is due in large part to human activity, I think you have two reports that are very similar.
Q Why was he --
Q Why did he call it the bureaucracy yesterday?
MR. FLEISCHER: I think the EPA issued a report that says the same thing. And I think the President was also reflecting about some of the way it was covered, that made it sound as if the report was somehow inconsistent with what he had said previously.
Q I don't think he reflected at all, he just said that, I saw it put out by a bureaucracy. What did he reflect on?
MR. FLEISCHER: I'm sharing with you his insights."
Ari Fleischer Sound Bite
Bush Warms To Climate
The Washington Times
By Greg Pierce
May 21, 1999
Source
Texas Gov. George W. Bush has changed his tune on a key environmental issue, saying he no longer believes there's any question that the globe is warming, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.
"I believe there is global warming," he said at a news conference last week. Mr. Bush had said just a few weeks ago that the "science is still out" on global warming. The governor, who is leading a crowded field of GOP presidential candidates, said his team of advisers had changed his mind.
"The last time I wasn't certain of the science," he said. "I've had some briefings recently and I'm becoming more convinced that the science proves there's global warming."
Tom "Smitty" Smith, director of the liberal consumer and environmental group Public Citizen, welcomed the new position.
"We are delighted that Gov. Bush is acknowledging that global warming is a problem," he said. "We would ask him to take a leadership role since Texas leads the nation in global warming."
But Texas Citizens for a Sound Economy, a conservative group that doubts global-warming theories, says Mr. Bush should take another look.
"We think there's been a lot of questionable and bad science that's been used," said the group's spokeswoman, Peggy Venable.
[End of Transcript]
More Than 15,000 Scientists Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth
Bush decisions rankle conservatives
"And now, a Republican administration will continue and complete the work of a Democratic administration. This is the way environmental policy should work."
George W. Bush - SOURCE
And what of the "6 Treaties"?
Try to focus. Wipe the spittle off your chin and put down "The New American" for a second.
Well someone disagrees with you but they are as idiotic as the Birchers
House Green Lights Major Enviro Bill - Legislation approved in final minutes, opponents work for defeat in Senate - NOVEMBER 19 2002
"Literally minutes before adjourning for the year, the House of Representatives without debate unanimously approved a $261 million-a-year legislative grab bag of goodies for environmentalists...
...Co-authored by Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Bob Smith, R-N.H., The American Wildlife Enhancement Act – S 990 – provides the wherewithal for massive land acquisition by state government agencies and non-profit groups, boosts the powers and status of the environmental organizations, and enacts a major amendment to the 1973 Endangered Species Act by adding a new designation – "species at risk" – to the familiar "threatened" and "endangered" categories. The establishment and expansion of several national wildlife refuges and a five-year rodent control program are thrown in for good measure.
The congressman responsible for its passage by the House last week was Rep. James Hansen, R-Utah. Although Hansen headed the House Resources Committee, to which the bill was assigned after it passed the Senate in December, he held no hearings on it. Instead, he kept it on a back shelf until 2:22 a.m. Friday, when he asked that the Resources Committee be discharged from further consideration of the bill and that it be placed on the calendar for a vote. Three minutes later – with major sections stripped from it – S 990 was on its way to the Senate. The same tactic was used for 14 other bills submitted for last-minute approval. Each was labeled non-controversial, placed on the consent calendar, voted upon, and sent to the Senate. This was essentially a rerun of the bill's passage by the Senate. On the evening of Dec. 22, at the end of one of the longest legislative years in decades, and with a mere handful of senators still present, Reid called for "unanimous consent" to pass S 990. The bill passed. "Who voted for and against the bill? No one will ever know. Was there even a quorum present? No one will ever know," wrote Henry Lamb, in an article in WorldNetDaily. Lamb suggested that the bill would be better named the "Screw-the-Landowner Act of 2001,"
Chuck Cushman?
He's a legend. He's been fighting environmental extremism since the 1970s. There's a terrific mini-bio of him in Pendley's It Takes A Hero, detailing how much he's helped people who were about to lose their farms and jobs to the Green Machine. Ronald Reagan appointed him to the National Parks Advisory Board.
If Chuck Cushman says this appointment is wrong, you can take it to the bank.
Do you drink Evian water? Evian backwards is naivE.
Why Fred, you've made it into "The Cult of Personality".
It all goes back to the UN!
!NUTS
No?
Then don't expect UB to respond.
(love the Jamaica bobsled team)
Next to Dukakis in the tank, that could be the worst man-made disaster of our times.
(with the exception of what you did to Uncle Bill on this thread that is...)
CAPITALISM MAGAZINE.COM
by Michelle Malkin
August 13, 2001
Source
When the Bush administration lands on the same side of an issue as The New York Times editorial board, Sen. Hillary Clinton and the Sierra Club, it's time to clear out the cockpit. The administration's latest junk science decision should cause Bush supporters to wonder: Is Al Gore secretly manning the EPA?
Last week, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency ordered General Electric Co. to fork over nearly half a billion dollars to dredge up long-buried chemicals from New York's Hudson River. That's exactly what the Clinton-Gore administration proposed in an eleventh-hour decree last year -- despite heated opposition from local residents, flimsy evidence of harm from the chemicals, probable injury to the natural habitat, and certain damage to the economy.
This massive, federally mandated cleanup will ruin the landscape and cost precious jobs in blue-collar communities along the river, but it will keep Beltway bureaucrats, lawyers and eco-whiners employed for decades. "This is a tremendous environmental victory," crowed Chris Ballantyne of the Sierra Club. A Times editorial called EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman's decision "admirable." Sen. Clinton declared dredging "the right position, based on the science, to take."
The pro-dredgers claim that PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) embedded in the river bottom pose a grave cancer risk and must be completely eliminated. GE produced the chemicals in the manufacturing of electrical transformers. The company legally disposed of its PCB-contaminated waste into the Hudson from the 1940s until 1977, when the chemical was banned.
Since that time, the tainted sediment has been buried by layers and layers of mud. Commerce and tourism on the banks are healthy; locals swim freely and safely in the river; and at least one town along the targeted area taps the river for drinking water. A review of the current scientific literature shows there is no credible evidence of increased human cancer risk from exposure to trace levels of PCBs. Studies of workers exposed to high PCB levels and studies of people who ate PCB-contaminated fish showed no increased cancer risk when compared to non-exposed populations.
Now, it's true that PCBs can cause cancerous tumors in animals -- but only after you inject enormous doses of the chemical into lab mice over prolonged periods. "But what about the fish?" the enviros wail. What about them? Thanks to sensible, minimally disruptive remediation efforts over the past three decades, fish populations are thriving. That might not be the case if the Clinton-Gore-Bush-Whitman plan goes through.
The proposed "cleanup" would involve dredging some 2.65 million cubic yards of contaminated sediment from the Hudson -- 19 hours a day, six days a week, six and a half months a year for an estimated five years. At least two new hazardous waste plants would be built on the river or its banks to process the PCBs, and an estimated 45,000 tons of waste a day would be hauled out to non-existent landfills (sure to be opposed by the same NIMBY enviros that created this mess).
According to the grass-roots activist group CEASE (Citizen Environmentalists Against Sludge Encapsulation), which has opposed dredging for nearly a quarter-century, the EPA project would also destroy 97 acres of prime aquatic habitat, killing or displacing all of the creatures that live there, and destabilize or destroy 17 miles of Hudson River shoreline.
Tim Havens, a small businessman who heads CEASE, told me this week he was "overwhelmingly disappointed" in the Bush administration's decision to carry out the Clinton-Gore plan. Havens blasted the EPA's arrogant secrecy and shoddy science. Whitman has never visited the affected counties and didn't even pay residents the courtesy of informing them of the decision before telling the press.
"We're staunch Republicans in these communities -- working class citizens, small businesspeople, farmers, homeowners and housewives," Havens told me. "We're the backbone of the American economy, and we thought Bush and his people would be a lot friendlier. They decided to take the easy way out." Havens warns: "We'll remember in November" when Bush ally and dredging proponent, GOP Governor of New York George Pataki, is up for re-election.
On the science, economics and politics of this dredging debacle, one thing's crystal clear: The Bush administration has mucked up big time.
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