# Presentation: 680406

## The Environment

## Our Environment at Risk

- 146 million Americans, including millions of children, are still breathing polluted air
- 45% of lakes and 40% of streams remain too polluted for drinking, fishing, or swimming
- One in four Americans lives within four miles of a major toxic waste site on the Superfund list
- Yet Republican policies are rolling back current environmental protections

## Democrats are Fighting to Protect the Environment from Republican Attacks

- Democrats are protecting the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
- Democrats are fighting to protect the Clean Air Act
- Democrats are fighting to protect the Clean Water Act
- Democrats are fighting to clean up major toxic waste sites around the country and restore the principle of “polluter pays”
- Democrats are fighting for a balanced national energy policy that includes investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies

## Republicans Are Doing the Bidding of Special Interests

- The Republican energy bill contains billions in special interest tax breaks for the oil, gas, and nuclear industries—plus weakening of environmental protections
- It waives the Clean Air Act for construction at oil and gas facilities
- It waives the Clean Air Act in communities that are blanketed with smog, hurting millions of children

## Republicans Are Doing the Bidding of Special Interests

- Republicans voted to slash environmental protection by $39 billion over the next 10 years below the amount needed to keep pace with inflation
- Republicans voted to open millions of acres of national parks and other public lands to rights-of-way by special interests, promoting private development of our public lands
- At the bidding of the timber and mining industries, Republicans voted to slash conservation funding below the levels the GOP itself promised 3 years ago

## Average Annual Number of Superfund Site Cleanups Has Fallen Drasticallyin Bush Administration

**76**

**43**

## President Bush Has Proposed Slashing Clean Water State Revolving Fund by 40 percent

**$ in billions**

**$1.3 billion**

**$850 million**

## Republicans Break Their Promise on Conservation Funding

**$ in billions**

**$1.56 billion**

**$991 million**

## What the Experts are Saying

- 	“Americans have watched the Bush Administration dismantle environmental laws that have improved the health and safety of families for decades.  Americans have watched President Bush consistently place the desires of powerful corporate interests ahead of the needs of regular people.”
*	**	**--League of Conservation Voters *
- 	“Thirty years of environmental progress has taught us that the Clean Air Act works.  So why is the Bush Administration leaving our communities at risk from increased smog pollution by gutting a critical part of it?”
*	**	**--Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club*

## What the Experts are Saying

- 	“The [energy] bill is a shocking abdication of the Administration’s and [GOP-controlled] Congress’ responsibility. ... In sum, this bill will not substantially increase energy supplies, will not reduce dependence on foreign oil and will not accelerate the development of viable new technologies. It will, however, provide a politically useful but ultimately dishonest symbolic action while dispensing a stunning amount of pork for the well-connected at taxpayer expense.”
- 		*--Jerry Taylor of the CATO Institute and Dan Becker of the Sierra Club, *
*	**	**Los Angeles Times. November 7, 2003*