The Most Anti-Environment Congress in History: Here's the Record

[marmar]

Published on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 by Common Dreams
The Most Anti-Environment Congress in History: Here's the Record

by Richard Schiffman


Global temperatures are rising, violent weather is increasing, chemicals in the air, food supply and water have led to soaring rates of allergies, asthma, certain cancers, hormone disruption, male infertility. Forest lands are vanishing at unprecedented rates, vast dead zones are spreading in the world’s oceans, we are running out of non-renewable fossil fuels. Everyone knows that we are facing an unprecedented environmental crisis-- right?

Wrong. This news seems never to have gotten to America’s Republican legislators. In the face of these huge and escalating threats, the GOP majority over the last year has voted no fewer than 247 times (nearly once a day for every day the House was in session) to weaken environmental protections that have been in place for decades and to defeat needed legislation.

This according to a report released on Monday by Representatives Henry Waxman, a member the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and Edward Markey a member of the Committee on Natural Resources. They have called the 112th Congress the most anti-environment ever. Here is how Waxman and Markey break down this dismal record.

•77 votes to undermine Clean Air Act protections, including votes to repeal the health- based standards that are the heart of the Clean Air Act and to block EPA regulation of toxic mercury and other harmful emissions from power plants, incinerators, industrial boilers, cement plants, and mining operations.

•39 votes to weaken protection of public lands and wildlife, including votes to halt reviews of public lands for possible wilderness designations and to remove protections for salmon, wolves, sea turtles, and other species.

•37 votes to block action to address climate change, including votes to overturn EPA’s scientific findings that climate change endangers human health and welfare; to block EPA from regulating carbon pollution from power plants, oil refineries, and vehicles; to prevent the United States from participating in international climate negotiations; and even to cut funding for basic climate science.

•31 votes to undermine Clean Water Act protections, including votes to strip EPA of authority to set water quality standards and enforce limits on industrial discharges; to repeal the EPA’s authority to stop mountaintop removal mining disposal; and to block EPA from protecting headwaters and wetlands that flow into navigable waters.

And House Republicans have not been content merely to shoot down vital new environmental legislation. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/06/20-2