Remember when a river in Cleveland caught fire and cars got eight miles to the gallon? Remember when small pieces of iron rained down on parts of Buffalo, and toxic chemicals were buried in a canal in Niagara Falls? Of course you don't, because those things haven't happened since the '60s and '70s. Thanks to advocates for the environment and forward-looking civic leaders, America has been cleaning up since around the time of the first Earth Day, in 1970.
But a bittersweet air has lingered around UB's celebration this week of Earth Day - a moment to celebrate both the splendor of the environment and the success of the environmental movement. That's because under George W. Bush, the environment is getting worse. Politicians and business leaders are leading America backwards by undermining air quality, standing still on emissions standards, opening up pristine federal lands to exploitation, and turning a cold shoulder to international reform efforts.
Important ecosystems have lost much of the protection they enjoyed for most of this century. Bush has let loggers encroach on national parklands, even such long-protected areas as the Sequoia National Park (the park with trees so tall you can drive your car through a tunnel cut in the massive trunk). And the Republican Congress recently voted to allow oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. They sold the plan by telling Americans that the footprint of the drilling area would be only 2,000 acres, and that it will give us about seven billion barrels of oil.
But according to environmental author Elizabeth Kolbert, the 2,000-acre figure is misleading - only accurate if, say, you consider the footprint of thirty miles' worth of pipeline as just the area where the pipelines' supports touch the ground. And seven billion barrels is a drop in the bucket compared to what we could save with easy conservation measures. For example, changing the standards for replacement tires to match those for new tires would save roughly the same amount. Raising fuel efficiency standards to 40 miles per gallon, which is possible with current technology, would save 60 billion barrels over the next 50 years.
Bush has also repealed key parts of the Clean Air Act, opening the door to smog problems and turning back thirty years of progress. He has also turned away the reform efforts of the international community. Notably, on Bush's urging, the United States recently failed to join a coalition of nations by signing the Kyoto Protocol, which would have made us cut our emissions just five percent. The Republicans said that the treaty was unfair to the United States because standards for Third World countries were less rigorous. Perhaps, but some country has to take the first step - and since U.S. pollution outnumbers the combined output of nearly every other country combined, why shouldn't we be that country?
Corporate leaders and their apologists in Washington give the same tired excuses. They say being sensitive to the environment is bad for business. But business wanes and waxes independent of environmental policies. Corporations also tend to ignore long-term costs (such as liability and cleanup) and they are all but oblivious to social costs (of logging in national parks, or drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, for example). It's up to the administration, Congress and the Supreme Court to think about these things, and they ought to ask themselves: Are a few short-term bucks for the fat cats worth the plunder of the land itself?
It's time this willing ignorance is coughed out of our system before it chokes some of us to death.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
