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Much of the money annually injected into our nation's economy is spent in ways that encourage continued exploitation of natural resources rather than environmental friendly growth. In an economy in which consumers buy goods and services based on short-term cost, Bush's efforts to roll back environmental regulations threaten the longterm move toward sustainable development. The United States must maintain serious environmental protection regulations and laws to garner international respect for its role in global affairs and to ensure that its economy continues to thrive on the face of a planet with a highly valuable yet resource-limited environment.
Even as we continue to degrade the resources around us, Bush is putting more and more responsibility for environmental protection in the hands of big business. Bush argues that business partnerships mean progress--allowing businesses to deal with environmental issues in ways that will not hurt the economy. However, at some point, the oil economy must be hurt enough to provide incentives to create an economy based on sustainable technologies. One example of Bush's partnership with the oil industries is his agreement to roll back the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards set by Congress in 1975. These standards set a minimum limit on the average fuel efficiency of vehicle fleets made by American auto-makers. Designed to encourage the auto industry to reduce development of gas-guzzling vehicles and explore alternative vehicle concepts, such as hybrid-electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars, the CAFE standards aimed topromote new directions in environmentally friendly automotive development. Without such standards, the incentive to market innovative, "green" vehicles is reduced.
It is optimistic at best (unrealisitic is perhaps a more appropriate word) to assume that big business will achieve environmental protection on its own. Hefty coffers and government partnerships allow businesses to fund dubious scientific studies on the environment and to stage significant--and sometimes effective--public relations and marketing campaigns that purport enviromental altruism while they continue to damage the environment in the quest for short-term profits.
Environmental protection in an industrial society must be achieved through innovation fostered by meaningful regulation, not through the type of bargaining and partnerships Bush and others are pushing. Business is simply too self-interested in its bottom line to care to about long-term environmental issues. Environmental regulations allow businesses to continue operating while establishing needed limits on pollution and economic incentives for research and development.
The environment is too important for the federal government to put at the disposal of corporations. If Bush and other politicians continue to roll back environmental regulations for short-term business interests, individual citizens must rise to the occasion and promote their right to the long-term health of the environment, demanding that their representatives in Congress enact new legislation to protect it. Environmental regulations provide a real economic incentive for the technological innovation that will bring about sustainable development. If citizens do not continue to loudly demand that environmental protections be put in place and rigorously enforced, politically and economically motivated cycles of exploitation of the environment will continue with little meaningful change.
--The Editors
