by Selvam Canagaratna
Readers who have followed this narrative these past few weekends, and especially last Sunday, should recognise GWB to be a perfect copy, in mind-set if nothing else, of America’s Founding Fathers. Most readers are also unlikely ever to mistake George W. Bush for an environmentalist. And that’s what is so intriguing about it all. Imagine, GWB, of all people, wanting - desperately, it would seem - to promote tropical forest conservation in a tiny island he probably didn’t know even existed back in 2000 when campaigning for the Presidency! What, we are certainly entitled to ask, are this man’s credentials in the sphere of environmental activism back home? After all, it’s America’s ‘handmaidens’ - the World Bank, IMF, WTO and ADB - that have ceaselessly touted the concepts of the ‘global’ economy and the ‘global’ village. One could, conceivably, opt out of being a member of either, but one has no option when it comes to the environment. It’s unarguably ‘global’ in its effect, and not even George W. Bush can do a damn about that (not that he wants to, of course); he promotes pollution but the whole world suffers, not just Americans.

Nobody actually wants pollution, not even politicians, says Bush-critic Paul Begala, but what happens is that other, more important priorities get in the way. "And, for George W. Bush, there is no more important priority than preserving, protecting and defending corporate power."

The Advisor to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, to give Mr. Rohan Pethiyagoda his official designation, while urging Sri Lankans to accept the TFCA, was candid enough to tell those of us not in the know that "...the US in effect torpedoed the Kyoto Protocol...". That reference was to the proposed Treaty on Global Climate Change. America, the world’s most prolific polluter, consequently bears the greater part of the blame for the increasingly adverse effects of global warming. To know how America sees the problem, let’s get it from the horse’s mouth. GWB was quoted thus in the Washington Post on April 23,2001: "First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country." That’s Bush being inscrutable without even trying.

Now let’s take a closer look at GWB’s credentials on environmental protection after he moved from the Texas Governor’s Mansion into the White House. Larry Noble, an analyst at the Center for Responsive Politics, summed it up succinctly: "After elections, the payback begins."

Bush’s environmental record in the White House turns out to be a continuation of the woeful litany of broken promises he left behind at the Governor’s Mansion in Texas. Let it roll, pardner...

* During the campaign Bush maintained he would not dump nuclear waste in America unless it was deemed scientifically safe. But he did just that in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain; 77,000 tons of it shipped, trucked and hauled by trains, passing through 43 states and coming within one mile of 50 million Americans while on its way to Nevada. Says Begala: "This...is the most deadly stuff on earth - waste that will still be radioactive in a thousand years. The United States Geological Service has designated Yucca Mountain as a High Probability Earthquake Hazard Zone having 33 earthquake faults in the immediate area surrounding the Mountain, including two that run under it. In 1992, an earthquake 35 miles away measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. I can’t think of a single good reason which made the Bush-Cheney duo break their word...but I can think of 7 million bad reasons...the nuclear power industry contributed more than $7 million to the Republican Party during the 2000 election year."

No account of the Bush administration’s multi-pronged attack on the environment would be complete without recording the unholy alliance and the mutually beneficial relationship between GWB and that enormous multinational corporate polluter, the ‘late’ energy giant Enron. The association predates Bush’s time as Governor. Bush’s company, Spectrum 7 (remember?) was in trouble and struggling to stay afloat way back in 1986. Enron, though established only in 1985, rode to his rescue. With a relationship going back that long it was no surprise that Enron became the single largest patron of George W. Bush’s improbable political career. Such was the closeness between him and Enron’s CEO, Ken Lay, that Bush fondly called him "Kenny Boy".

Says Begala: "In the 2000 election cycle, like any politically sophisticated corporation, Enron gave to both parties, but it wasn’t exactly balanced... George W. Bush alone received more than nine times more money from Enron than every Democrat running in every House and Senate race in America combined. Staggering."

Once he became President, GWB paid back Kenny-Boy’s many favours by populating the government of the United States with Enron cronies: over 52 former Enron executives, lobbyists, lawyers or significant shareholders were placed in key positions. Says Begala: "The reality is... that Bush and Cheney did turn huge amounts of America’s public policy over to Enron, a corporation that will go down in history as representing corruption, arrogance and venality...That’s why George’s behaviour after Enron collapsed was so disconcerting. Said to prize loyalty above all other virtues, the President pretended he barely knew Kenny-Boy....it does show the hypocrisy, the jaw-dropping mendacity of the man who sat in the Oval Office...as Enron spiralled into bankruptcy."

This, then, is the Bush-Cheney environmental wrecking crew trashing America’s own environment with gay abandon, while professing to an overwhelming desire to help Sri Lanka save hers through the Tropical Forest Conservation Act. This latest manifestation of American altruism occurs, strangely enough, just when the ADB is also offering to help us save our Protected Areas, "persuading" us in the process to adopt a new wildlife policy (that stresses exploitation rather than conservation) and to effect radical changes to our existing Fauna & Flora Protection Ordinance that make a mockery of "protection". There is something sinister afoot, and next week we’ll consider the pros and cons of the TFCA and see how it fits into the big picture.