DEAN STATEMENT ON CHRISTIE WHITMAN’S DEPARTURE FROM EPA

By Anonymous -
From the Dean Campaign...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 21, 2003

DEAN STATEMENT ON CHRISTIE WHITMAN'S DEPARTURE FROM EPA; LAST VOICE OF MODERATION GONE FROM ADMINISTRATION

Salt Lake City, UT - Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean today commented on the resignation of Christie Whitman from the Environmental Protection Agency and spoke out against the Bush Administration's disastrous environmental record.
"Administrator Whitman was one of the few voices of moderation in the Bush Administration. Unfortunately, her voice was muted by the Bush-Cheney obsession with rewarding their friends in the oil industry by rolling back decades of bipartisan progress on protecting our environment."

Upon taking office, President Bush swiftly broke his promise to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide - a major contributor to global warming. The Bush Administration has repeatedly worked to weaken clean air, clean water, and other environmental laws; slashed environmental enforcement efforts; and pushed for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other environmentally sensitive areas.

Dean stated that, "The burden is on the President to show the nation that he cares about the environment more than he cares about helping his political friends in the oil and gas industries."


UPDATE: This related interview in Grist magazine is devoted to environmental, energy, and genetics policy. Well-worth a read. Dean defends ethanol as an alternative fuel, which is a reasonable argument (though I personally am still opposed). However, I was surprised to see he endorsed CAFE standards, given that they have caused an increase in highway deaths as cars get lighter (and more unsafe).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A fair solution to Jerusalem

By Aziz P. -
I remember reading one of the books by Tom Clancy in which Jack Ryan was credited with coming up with a solution for Middle East peace which was pointedly never actually detailed in the novel. It was just a way to give his character some foreign policy cred, but ended up like that mysterious suitcase in Pulp Fiction. I couldn't help but be reminded of that, though, when I read former New York mayor Ed Koch's innovative solution to resolving the status of Jerusalem . Instead of putting the hot-button issue of Jerusalem last on the agenda, the issue should be addressed first. If the Jerusalem question is solved, everything else should fall into place more easily. I believe there is a way to keep Jerusalem unified. I am talking not only of the old walled city, which is a very small part of the city of Jerusalem, but the whole city, east, west, north and south. [...] My suggestion is to situate the new Palestinian capital in that part of East Jerusalem that is occupied overwhelming
Read more

Conservatism's shari'a, liberalism's ijtihad

By Aziz P. -
An interesting meta-debate by intellectual conservatives over conservatism's future is playing out. It started with David Frum's Waterloo essay, which led to his political excommunication. Julian Sanchez observed that this represented an epistemic closing of the conservative mind , a thesis that was validated by the retribution visited upon Jim Manzi for daring to suggest that conservatives will achieve more persuasion by using honest, strong arguments instead of weak, emotional ones. All of this has led John Quiggin at Crooked Timber to argue most wisely that as conservatism implodes, liberalism needs to find its own rationale that is more than just "not conservatism". Quiggin has a list of priorities for the liberal movement to address, and closes with the general plea, ...the left has to stand for something more than keeping the existing order afloat with incremental improvements. We need to offer the hope of a better world as an alternative to the angry tribali
Read more