One Says Black, One Says White: It's Red vs. Green
By John Millrany - April 6, 2001Environmentalists are seeing red over the Bush administration’s green policies, but maybe things may look a little brighter come the end of the month when Earth Day returns to our planet.
While professional risk managers watch from the sidelines, controversy continues to swirl passions on the issue of how to promote a healthy environment without causing undue economic repercussions. The White House is showing its sensitive colors in an effort to marshal support for its ecologically conscious guidelines.
Bush broached the subject March 29 at a press conference, opening with a pledge to reduce arsenic in drinking water. Taking a shot at several last-minute Clinton White House decrees to reduce environmental pollution, Bush officials said lowering the 50-year standard of 50 parts per billion of arsenic in water to 10 ppb was too extreme, arguing that the Environmental Protection Agency is now formulating a more realistic standard.
According to the Washington Post, Republicans are uneasy about the uproar over his decisions on arsenic, carbon dioxide and mining standards. "You need an environmental message that sells in the House because it’s a green House," the Post quoted a senior GOP aide. "At some point, Bush’s positions are going to cause some problems over here."
Administration officials conceded they didn’t make their case strongly as the batch of regulatory changes from the White House came out. "Trying to coordinate it all proved difficult. We’ll do a better job in the future," a senior official said.
But issues over DC partisanship will probably remain a most sticky wicket. According to Los Angeles Times Political Writer Ronald Brownstein, "As President Bush’s budget rumbles through a gantlet of near party-line votes in the Senate this week, it increasingly appears his presidency is perpetuating—and perhaps intensifying—the cycle of partisan hostility he pledged to end as a candidate.
"Bush is not inspiring the personal antagonism that President Clinton did. But the early evidence suggests Bush’s agenda is polarizing the country and Congress as quickly as his predecessor’s."
One of the GOP’s archenemies from California, US Sen. Barbara Boxer, expressed her impatience over the chromium 6 debate, charging that the Feds aren’t moving fast enough to test water quality for appropriate standards. She and co-sponsor Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) introduced a bill April 4 to require the EPA to set a chromium 6 (a known carcinogenic) limit based on recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences.
As arguments continue to be waged, what’s next? How about lunch meat standards? We got air, water, and soil problems—but let’s not forget lunch.
The latest out of Washington is the proposed reversal of a federal policy that required ground beef used in government school lunch programs to be tested to ensure the meat is free of salmonella. The Post notes that the Agriculture Department is moving to change the Clinton administration policy after concluding that less costly and more effective alternatives for protecting meat safety could be as efficacious. Officials said the current "zero tolerance" policy for salmonella in school lunch meals was not scientifically justified.
Hmmm, seems like we’ve heard this kind of argument before, i.e., that scientists can’t seem to agree on how serious the greenhouse effect truly is. | 
__May11th2017.gif)
