Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress

Carl Pope is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and his co-author Paul Rauber is a senior editor at Sierra Magazine. Their prose is direct, clear and hard-hitting, and their book is a devastating indictment of the Bush administration's environmental polices. Exhibit #1 is the big lie. As Pope and Rauber put it, the Bush administration's strategy is to "Say one thing, do another" and "Never admit what you're up to. Rather, assert the opposite repeatedly and despite all available evidence." (p. 24) The interesting thing about this is, what could be more authoritarian and anti-democratic? Bush's so-called "Clear Skies" proposal, which is aimed at circumventing the Clean Air Act, is an excellent example of the big lie and of the Orwellian doublethink employed by Bush's people. The authors quote Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords as saying, "The President says one thing, but does another...With a straight face he talks about protecting resources for our children--even as he abandons the federal protection of land and air and water as fast as he can. Does he think we don't notice?" (p. 78) Actually we don't, most of us anyway. It very hard for most people to believe that the President can call for "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" while deliberately fostering the opposite. Yet, that is exactly what Bush does as this book so clearly and overwhelming demonstrates. The question might be why? Don't the people in the Bush administration love their children too? Strange as it may seem the faith-based logic of the administration has Higher goals. It believes first that it is essential to reduce the size and effectiveness of government. Bush wants to make government less popular by making it less effective (see Chapter 13). But more than this is an underlining rationale that simultaneously desires a return to a social Darwinian ethos while believing that the Second Coming will make all of this irrelevant anyway. Reagan's Secretary of the Interior James Watt, who would fit nicely into the Bush administration except for his candid expression, put it like this when asked if it might not be wise to save something for future generations: "I don't know how many future generations we can count on until the Lord returns." (p. 25) Meanwhile, no more "nanny state." Let's bring back the "social Darwinian notion of the struggle for existence as 'red in tooth and claw.'" Only "this time...the predators" will be "ruthless corporations, not carnivores." Let's "Stop coddling the public. Only wimps and trial lawyers worry about parts per million." (p. 23) Indeed, there is the idea that winning is its own justification, even if you cheat to win, and the devil take the hindmost. Consequently it is not greed alone that is powering the Bush pollution machine. It is instead a kind of spiritual arrogance that allows the employment of a deliberate strategy of ignorance, as the authors see it, a strategy that allows Bush to reward polluters and others who d

I'd thought the worst of it was that the Bushwhackwers intended to undo the New Deal era. But there's more, as this work documents: they want to scotch the entire environmental legacy beginning with T. Roosevelt's pioneering conservation activism, and his challenge to the Social Darwinism of the age of the robber barons and laissez faire. And why are we not all fired up? Because dubious Dubya is a brazen liar/manipulator, along with his media crew, and all the slogans are designed to paralyze the public long enough to get the stealth jobs done. The number of rollbacks on the environment listed in this book is staggering, plus other record breaking audacities, like suppressing the environmental reports of the 9/11 aftermath. The author has a good epitaph for this presidency: laissez faire (caveat emptor) as to regulation, now, in the death throes of the Clean Air Act, laissez spiror, let the breather beware. What's a little asthma in a million children. It's the economy, Dubya.

There are plenty of recent books exposing the ethical crises of the Bush administration. This one by Pope and Rauber focuses on the Bush environmental record, and you shouldn't be surprised that there is enough on that subject to fill an entire book. Here we find that the modern neoconservative anti-environmentalism is not just an offshoot of the administration's megalomania for corporate profiteering and campaign contributions, but also the result of unyielding and extremist ideology. This hard conservatism, cloaked under dishonest claims of compassion and populism, indicates a sheer hatred for nature by our current leaders that would be insulting if it wasn't so worrisome for our national heritage. Pope and Rauber show convincingly that corporate cronyism has given us anemic enforcement of existing regulations, at the whim of campaign contributors, as well as an across-the-board assault on environmental protections of any kind and a complete contempt for the interests of the American public. Pope and Rauber then examine the hard-right ideology of Bush and his neoconservative pals, which has led to some downright absurd actions against the environment. These include actually trying to increase the trade in endangered species (which would have miniscule impact on the American economy, but is a triumph of ideology over common sense), plus ordering the US military to stop its voluntary efforts toward environmental protection, or cracking down on states who are trying to enforce protections stronger than those of the Feds (this from an administration concerned about states' rights).Pope and Rauber carry out a very strong investigation here, backed up solidly by journalistic sources and interviews. The investigation also gives the reader a few bonuses, like some detective work into Dick Cheney's secret energy task force, and a debunking of many of the claims for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I must complain a bit about the rather thin and idealistic "solutions" chapter that wraps up the investigation, but the appendix that closes the book, giving a chronology of the administration's assault on environmental law and policy, is truly disturbing in its sheer size and frequency. Pope and Rauber find that our administration, in its attempts to discredit all opposing realms of political thought, is dealing in an absurd hatred of nature that is completely lacking in common sense, not to mention any concern for the wishes of the people or the health of humanity.(...)

This detailed, and highly readable, account of the Bush administration's predation's on our nation's natural resources will leave you incredulous -- until you see the pages and pages of citations at the end. It's amazing that more people don't realize what's going on, and one can only hope that this book will open some eyes.

The authors show that the Bush administration is not just threatining the environment and health, but also science and even democracy. While promoting freedom overseas, the Bushies are taking it away at home by making secret deals, and taking away people's right to sue and influence legislation. They also show that far from having new ideas on how to solve environmental problems, the administration is returning to the bad old days of the robber-barrons and social Darwinism.