Inauguration Day, January 2001
Within hours of becoming president, Bush freezes action on one of the single largest conservation measures of the past 100 years - former President Clinton 's "roadless" policy, which protects 58.5 million acres of wilderness from encroachment by cars, trucks and off- road vehicles.

February 2001
President Bush nominates Gale Norton as Secretary of the Interior. Norton formerly worked with one of the most anti-environmental organizations in the country, the Mountain States Legal Foundation, headed at one point by the now - infamous anti-environmentalist James Watt.

March 2001
In an effort to repeal regulations sharply reducing the amount of arsenic allowable in drinking water, the Bush administration calls for "more study" on the subject. (When the National Academy of Sciences later reports current regulations are too lax, the administration ignores it, and lets the regulations stand.) Bush also abandons his campaign promise to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the "greenhouse gas" believed to cause global warming.

April 2001
The Bush Administration enters into negotiations with the snowmobile industry about reversing a ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Snowmobiles are responsible for up to 68% of Yellowstone's carbon monoxide pollution. At the same time, the administration announces it will weaken the requirements to make air conditioners, a huge consumer of electricity, more energy efficient. The lost energy savings equals the annual output equivalent of 50 medium-sized power plants!

May 2001
Bush releases his administration's energy plan, calling for increased reliance on fossil fuels, including oil, coal and natural gas, and cutting the budget for energy efficiency research and alternative power resources by nearly a third. Besides being developed in secret, with no input from environmental experts, it also proposes building 63 new nuclear plants; existing plants are now seen as potential terrorist targets, and many older plants still pose significant environmental hazards.

June 2001
Interior Secretary Norton abandons plans to reintroduce grizzly bears in the Selway-Bitterroot Ecosystem of the Northern Rockies in favor of an official position of "no action."

July 2001
EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman goes to federal court to seek an 18-month delay on the Clinton-era ruling under the Clean Water Act requiring states to develop plans for pollution runoff. The Bush administration says they intend to change the rules and have since been taking input from industry sources to bolster support for weakening the regulations.

August 2001
The House of Representatives passes the Bush energy proposal, including plans to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Meanwhile, Interior Secretary Norton, particularly ardent in her support of Arctic drilling, "mistakenly" states in an official document to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that local caribou herds breed primarily "outside the refuge."

September 2001
Bush pushes an enormous ($15 billion) bailout and rescue package for the airline industry through Congress. Much more modest proposals for rail projects languish by the wayside. This despite the fact that rail remains a more efficient, less polluting and safer mode of travel than air.

October 2001
The administration takes away Interior Department power to veto mining permits, even if the mining would cause "substantial irreparable harm" to environmental, cultural, or scientific resources. The Interior Department itself, in lock step with the administration, reverses key Clinton-era requirements for mining operations, including environmental performance standards.

November 2001
The Army Corps of Engineers, without consulting EPA or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, issues a "regulatory guidance letter" unilaterally changing its "no net loss" of wetlands rule. It declares that developers who wish to build on wetlands must only "preserve existing wetlands" elsewhere instead of creating new ones, in effect leading to a potential net loss of wetlands.

December 2001
Bush and Republicans in Congress fight to pass an "economic stimulus package" that provides $2.4 billion worth of tax breaks, credits and loopholes for corporations like General Electric ($600 million), ChevronTexaco ($572 million) and Enron ($254 million)

top