Bush and the environment: he's misunderstood

Atrios and Busy, busy, busy comment on an LA Times article on Bush’s environmental policy which mostly defends Bush’s record on the environment by pointing out that things are mostly still getting as better as they were under Bush I and Clinton, so Bush II can’t be all that bad.

OK, so Bush II hasn’t completely rewritten all of the environmental laws, so good is still done thanks to previous administrations and Congresses. But that’s nothing you can claim credit for. You can rightly be satisfied that levels of acid rain are lower under Bush than they were under Clinton; but given that Bush has done nothing about acid rain, you can’t say he’s got anything to do with that. Existing mechanisms continue to work satisfactorily, and that’s all you can say.

Then we come to this fantastical justification for drilling in wildlife reserves:

New White House rules do make it easier to drill for oil and natural gas on public lands. But you can’t demand no oil drilling and also demand no mileage restrictions on SUVs. Until American voters are willing to make a serious commitment to energy conservation — and there is no sign of this — it’s hypocritical to insist that oil and gas must be produced out of sight, out of mind.

That’s fair enough - but the people who are against further oil drilling are also, for the most part, in favour of renewable energy / better fuel consumption for SUVs. As soon as you accept this, the argument for drilling in Alaska falls apart. As it happens, I believe that the US is a great place for renewable energy: it has a host of people with emerging technology and engineering skills, and as a large country it also has a wide range of meteorological climates. It’s got vast areas of massive sunshine exposure, immense coasts with powerful waves, loads of featureless flat land buffeted by wind. If you’re a small country, what types of renewable energy sources you get is pretty much down to pot luck - the UK lucks out on wind and wave, while Brazil pretty much only has hydro power, which is why they’re talking about beefing up nuclear power as a safety net. But the US has everything somewhere.

Anyway. The article finishes with this mind-boggling paragraph:

By relentlessly exaggerating the case against Bush’s environmental policies, Democrats and environmentalists only serve to discourage the president from proposing higher vehicle mileage standards or meaningful global warming rules, the two most keenly needed ecological reforms. After all, Bush has already made substantial positive improvements in several environmental categories and has only been bashed as his thanks.

Optimism about success is what will inspire the country to great undertakings, such as preventing an artificial greenhouse effect. There can’t be optimism until Bush-bashers drop the phony pretense that everything is getting worse.

I don’t know what’s worse. Either:

1. Bush will only do what’s popular, and not what’s right; or
2. Democracy is flawed because there’s no incentive to make unpopular decisions, and that’s wrong

Noticeably lacking from these last two paragraphs is the idea that you can prove someone wrong. Gregg Easterbrook instead resorts to intellectual bullying: President Bush is right, and you should just accept that. He’s not making the right decisions because 1) you’ve chosen a political system where you want someone to tell you what you want to hear, and George Bush is the person you chose; and 2) as long as the system remains that way Bush is who you deserve.

That’s a pretty depressing conclusion.