To hear environmentalists tell it, President Bush, given his way, would allow business and industry to freely pollute our waterways, poison our air, spoil our parks and wildlife refuges, and leave us all to die. At least that's the alarming way the president's stands on environmental issues are being presented by the various news outlets in recent weeks.
Chances are, the latter.
After all, it is better theater to present the story as a clash between the environment-destroying president and the brave defenders of the public health than to offer a neutral forum for the reasoned debate between people with different views on a controversial topic. That would make the story too gray, and therefore, in the eyes of many making news decisions, dull and uninteresting. Consider reports last week that Bush would not seek Senate approval of the 1997 Kyoto Treaty, which would impose tough restrictions on the United States and other industrial countries in the emission of so-called greenhouse gases that may contribute to global warming. The television networks reacted as if the world were about to end. Second, while former President Bill Clinton and his vice president, Al Gore, said they supported the treaty, negotiated in 1997, they did absolutely nothing to get it approved by the Senate in the remaining three years of their tenure.