Those that do not understand why Bush would relax these rules and harm the environment cite once again the tremendous amount of money that the utility industry has given to the Bush campaign as a potential reason for the rule changes. This does not mean that the writer is anti-Bush, however, as there is no guarantee that a different President in office would not have done exactly the same thing.
There is also a discussion by the Bush administration to weaken the rules that sewage treatment plants must abide by. This would allow more pollution to enter the water, as well as the pollution that would be in the air from the relaxed rules on air quality. The new standard would allow treatment plants to have an abundance of disease-causing microbes in the water that gets released, provided there was a reason, such as a heavy rainfall, that the treatment plant was overloaded. Previously, the plants had to remove these microbes, but this was costly. This would save the $90 billion to $190 billion that it would currently cost to meet the stricter requirements. There is, however, the issue of water quality. People swim, boat, and fish in the waters downstream from many of these plants, and drinking water also comes from many of the rivers and lakes (Return, 2003, 4).
While this change in rules is good for the utility industry, it is bad for the health and safety of Americans. It is also a problem for foreign policy for two reasons. First, other countries see that the United States has given itself a license to pollute the planet. It is only a matter of time before other countries will begin to adopt this opinion. This is especially true if the Kyoto Protocol is not signed by enough countries and is therefore no longer part of international law (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 87).
Second, countries that do business with the United States and choose not to allow themselves to pollute the environment will no longer want to be associated with America. The respect that many other nations have for the United States will drop, and there will likely be trade issues and tariffs placed against goods that come from a country that is ruining the air and water for everyone in the world with a lack of interest in human health that many people would find shocking and appalling. It is clear from the editorials and other sources presented that the American public does not want this kind of pollution in their air and water, and that President Bush is not doing this country or the world any favors by allowing it to happen (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 88).
Global warming itself will now be addressed in more depth as the discussion turns away from the current administration and its problems with global warming and environmental issues and looks more toward the issue of global warming itself, how it occurs, and what kinds of changes it is already causing to the environment (Healy and Tapick, 2004, 129). The scientific evidence is very strong that the activities that human beings are involved in produce many greenhouse gases. The most notable one of these is the carbon dioxide that comes from the burning of fossil fuels. This is seen to be the largest cause of global warming, not just in the United States but throughout the world as well.
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