I just posted the following reply on Joe Romm's blog, under his entry on "Successful Failures: The Bush environmental and energy legacy." I realised I might as well reproduce it here (no copyright concern cribbing from myself, eh?)
I'm going to add a brief follow-up mentioning other authors like Chris Mooney, Stauber & Rampton, and Al Gore's new Assault on Reason (as noted in my previous blog entry); I'll post a vanity link back to this blog while I'm at it.
Another devastating account of Bush’s extreme anti-environment “legacy” is in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s book Crimes Against Nature Amazon link. It’s a well-documented litany of Bush’s single-minded campaign to lift environmental restrictions in every imaginable area, including appointing anti-environment ideologues to head virtually every department, to evade action on any form of pollution anywhere, and to undermine every scientific expert speaking up for public health, clean air, clean water or for any action on global warming.I am simply appalled at this disgraceful history, which is a stain on the name “Republican.” Apart from hoping for a Democratic win in November, I feel the nation desperately needs to wake up to this pro-pollution, anti-earth, anti-life agenda which the neocon movement is poisoning the political system - and the nation itself. We need a total reform of the conservative tradition to recoup the values of actually conserving, and of respecting our fellow citizens’ rights to safety and property free from toxic assault by PAC-funding, spin-doctoring agribusiness, extractive and consumptive smokestack industry.The religious right needs to speak out against the unholy alliance of social conservatism with a hideous anti-human cynicism that blesses every want of corporate donors for free rein to pollute, despoil and contaminate for free. Foisting smog, mercury, benzene, and hormone disrupters on your neighbors is not a “family value.”Am I dreaming to hope for some better class of conservatives who will come forward to take over the leadership of the Republican party? Or are we forever left with a legacy of one party at war with nature?
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