The Washington Post has an interesting article about Dick Cheney’s work to systematically destroy the environment in favor of giving handouts to businesses affected by environmental regulations.
His track record is abysmal, though. The article has two examples where his meddling into environmental policy came at pretty high costs, and ultimately was not successful, quite the opposite actually.
Klamath River is one of the habitats of endangered fish. It’s also a source of irrigation water for local farmers, who have been suffering from lack of water ever since the rain levels dropped and the Endangered Species Act prohibited taking adequate amounts of water from the Klamath River. Dick Cheney maneuvered around the Endangered Species Act and made sure the farmers got their water. The fish died, and a federal court ruled against Dick Cheney’s new “environmental policy” a few years later and prohibited the Federal Government from diverting water from the Klamath River. Meanwhile the fishermen in the area had their livelihood completely decimated and US Congress authorized $60M in disaster aid to keep the fishing industry from completely disappearing. What an astounding victory for Dick Cheney!
The other example the article states is the relaxing of air pollution regulations by the Environment Protection Agency. It turns out Dick Cheney ram the new “pro-business” regulations down the throat of EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman. She refused to sign the new air pollution regulations because she knew they weren’t scientifically sound. She resigned. The new regulations went into affect only to be overturned by federal appeals court. The federal appeals court judges stated in their decision to struck down the new regulations that:
…administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid “only in a Humpty-Dumpty world.”
Humpty-Dumpty sounds about right.
-TPP
