Bush's seven deadly environmental sins

Bush Sin 4: Abandoned endangered species
Not once during the Bush administration has the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service voluntarily sought to list a species as endangered or threatened, offering it more protections. All the high-profile listings, such as polar bears, have come about after the government has been sued or petitioned by environmental groups and citizens.

"They've destroyed the capacity of government biologists to do their jobs," says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "There has been a huge assault. They've monkeyed with the science, forced many scientists out, starved budgets, prevented research findings from being shared, and prevented scientists from commenting to the media."

The administration also tried to force through regulations that would allow government agencies to build roads or start new mining projects without consulting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about whether it would harm endangered species, a process known as "self-consultation."

Obama mission
Recognize that "self-consultation" is a conflict-of-interest oxymoron. And do as U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists say. Currently, the service has 252 species, from the Pacific sheath-tailed bat to the Arizona tree frog, that are candidates for listing as threatened or endangered. "It's not like you have to go in and do a bunch of research. You could come in very quickly on Day One and say: 'We'll make a commitment to list every single one of those species in 24 months," says Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Bush Sin 5: Carved up the American West for oil and gas excavation
It's been "Drill, baby, drill," all right. A whopping 35,000 drilling permits have been issued for onshore federal lands during the past seven years. More than 80 percent of those were for natural gas production.

Since Bush took office, an area slightly larger than the state of Kentucky has been leased for oil and gas drilling on public lands in the United States; almost 27 million acres have been designated to be plundered for their hydrocarbons. Yet many of those acres, and ones still under lease from the Clinton administration, aren't being developed.

"Why are we leasing additional acreage in the West, when there are tens of millions of acres under lease which aren't being developed?" says David Alberswerth, a former Clinton administration official who worked on oil and gas leases for the Department of the Interior, and is now with the Wilderness Society.

Obama mission
Curtail the number of leases sold. Protect wildlife, air and water around existing projects. Restrict drilling on crucial wintering range for elk. Close a bizarre loophole that allows oil companies to be exempt from some clean-water regulations.

Make good on the "use it or lose it" approach to oil and gas leases. Require oil companies to develop the 68 million acres of land -- over 40 million of which are offshore -- that they have already leased and are not drilling on. Don't open up more federal land to drilling when the companies aren't making full use of the lands already available to them.

Bush Sin 6: Not seeing the forest or the trees
The Bush administration never met a tree that wouldn't look better as a 2x4 in Home Depot, or a wilderness area that wouldn't look better with a road running through it. In the name of fire protection, the Bush administration implemented Orwellian "Healthy Forests" policies, dedicated to "thinning," also known as logging, national forests. "That was their effort to blame environmental laws and regulations for the big fires that happened back in the early part of the decade," explains Mike Anderson, senior resource analyst for the Wilderness Society.

One of the administration's first policy actions was to try to rescind the Clinton administration's eleventh-hour "roadless rule," which protects 58.5 million acres, about a third of the national forests. The Bushies have been fighting it ever since, both in the courts, and with their own regulations.

However, the legal and regulatory morass has kept the administration busy, and prevented many acres from being marred with roads or logged. As of January 2008, nationwide, there have been only seven miles of new roads, and about 500 acres of logging, that would violate the roadless rule since January 2001, according to Anderson.

Obama mission
Stand by the Clinton roadless rule and "keep over 58 million acres of national forests pristine," as Obama promised. Drop the opposition in court cases to the rule. While working to ensure protection of those lands permanently, prevent logging in them now by drafting a conservationist policy statement to federal land managers, instructing the Forest Service to not allow logging in, say, the hotly contested Tongass National Forest in Alaska.

Bush Sin 7: Choked our clean-air standards
In the name of industry, the Bush administration has spent the past eight years trying to weaken clean-air standards, including attempting to water down "new source review" regulations on coal-fired power plants. "They've tried to do this in a dozen different ways, and the courts have fought them down, time and time again," says Pope of the Sierra Club.

And they're still at it. Even now, the administration has proposed two rules that would weaken clean-air standards by allowing power plants to increase emissions without adding pollution controls, and by permitting more pollution near national parks, which it's racing to finalize before Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama mission
Uphold the Clean Air Act and reverse the Bush administration's ongoing attempts to chip away at clean-air standards. And regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, as the Supreme Court has allowed.