Gore Blasts Bush on Environment

NEW YORK, New York, January 15, 2004 (ENS) - Former Vice President Al Gore today slammed President George W. Bush's environmental record and described Bush as a "moral coward" willing to undermine the public interest in order to appease his financial contributors. Gore told a Manhattan audience the Bush administration is pursuing "radical changes that reverse a century of American policy designed to protect our natural resources."

"The White House has routinely gone out on a limb to involve large contributors representing companies charged with violating environmental laws and regulations in the drafting of new laws and regulations designed to let their clients off the hook," Gore said.

Gore, who lost the 2000 presidential election to Bush, has emerged as a vocal critic of the administration and today's speech was the latest in a series blasting the President.

"We are now at a true fork in the road," Gore said. "And in order to take the right path, we must choose the right values and adopt the right perspective."

Gore told the invited audience at New York's Beacon Theater that the administration has "explored new frontiers in cynicism by time and time again actually appointing the principal lobbyists and lawyers for the biggest polluters to be in charge of administering the laws that their clients are charged with violating."

"At times it seems as if the Bush administration is wholly owned by the coal, oil, utility and mining companies," said Gore.

Former Vice President Al Gore. (Photo courtesy moveon.org)

In each case the administration devising policies in secret and in close cooperation with special interests that have a vested interest in the outcome, Gore said, and in each case "the public interest is not only ignored but actively undermined."

The administration's proposal to reduce mercury emissions from coal fired power plants falls far short of what could - and should - be done to reduce that pollutant, Gore said, and is based on the decision not to treat mercury as a hazardous air pollutant.

"Are you all right with that - the President saying that mercury should not be treated as a hazardous air pollutant?" Gore asked.

Supporters of Bush's environmental policies lashed out at Gore and called him an extremist out of step with the American public.

"The speech is full of demagoguery, misleading statements, formulations intended to deceive, unsupported allegations of wrongdoing and hypocrisy," said Amy Ridenour, president of The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank based in Washington D.C.

There was a partisan feel to Gore's speech, which was sponsored by the liberal activist group moveon.org and the organization Environment 2004.

But the former vice president is far from the only critic of the Bush administration's environmental policies - many environmentalists and Congressional Democrats, as well as few Republicans - have voiced similar rebukes of the administration.

In today's speech Gore reserved some of his sharpest criticism for President Bush's stance on global warming, which he described as "reckless and extreme."

Bush toured a Detroit power plant last September and defended his environmental record as one that seeks the proper balance between environmental protection and the economic needs of the nation. (Photo by Tina Hager courtesy White House)

Gore accused the President of ignoring ample scientific evidence from the vast majority of the world's most respected environmental scientists.

The clear message from the scientific community, Gore said, is that global warming caused by human activities "is becoming a serious threat to our common future."

But the Bush administration "does not seem to hear the warnings of the scientific community in the same way that most of us do," Gore said.

The President's global warming policy has "caused America to be seen by the other nations of the world as showing disdain for the international community," Gore said.

"There is no doubt that we could solve the problem of global warming," Gore said. "Instead of spending enormous sums of money on an unimaginative and retread effort to make a tiny portion of the Moon habitable for a handful of people, we should focus instead on a massive effort to ensure that the Earth is habitable for future generations."

Investment in alternative energy sources and environmentally sustainable technologies can strengthen the U.S. economy, create millions of new jobs and "inspire the world with a bold and moral vision of humankind's future."