The Dark Lord Leaves No Tracks

Really, with everything else he has to do - counting his millions, making plans for invading yet more countries, teaching his subordinates how to lie better, taking conference calls with Satan, Beelzebub and Moloch, standing in as President while Bush has his butt reamed...oh, what do I even know? - you'd think that Dick Cheney would leave the environment to lesser mortals, like Dirk Kempthorne and Stephen Johnson. But no. Although Mark Morford has an amusing little essay about Cheney's two hours as president (President Cheney Sickens Planet), it actually has nothing to do with the environment. Really, the facts are far worse than Morford's ink-huffing fantasies, IMHO.

This WaPo article from late June, Leaving No Tracks, shows how Cheney has been intimately involved in undercutting environmental law to favor big business (including big agribusiness), from the minute he stepped into office. His interference was the fulcrum for Christine Todd Whitman's stepping out of her position as administrator of the EPA:

It was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed account so far of her departure.

The Klamath River Basin fish kill, for which Cheney was directly responsible, is extensively reported in the WaPo article, and shows the stealth the VP uses in these cases in order to subvert and bypass legal means in order to achieve his ends. The results of this case (in which Cheney et al manipulated not only law but environmental science) are still ongoing: Biologists: Klamath Fish Still Need Help as are the legal ramifications. In fact:

A U.S. House panel holds a hearing next Tuesday to look at what role Vice President Dick Cheney played in a decision to restore irrigation, which was followed by the deaths of some 70,000 salmon in the Klamath River in 2002 due to low water levels.

Pitts said that since 2001, the federal government has been spending about $85 million a year on various fish habitat and water conservation projects in the basin.

So, In all his machinations, the man is at least consistent.

Technorati Tags: Cheney environment EPA Christie Todd Whitman Klamath River fishkill

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