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dumped in drinking water by hard-rock mines. Bush decided it won’t hurt people in Utah and Nevada to swallow 80 percent more of the soluble poison.
    Next, he casually reneged on a campaign promise to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants. Overruling his new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Todd Whitman, Bush said that adding smog controls would be a financial hardship for utilities.
    He made the same argument for weaseling out of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit the volume of greenhouse gases released into the global atmosphere.
    Predictably, the two industries that will gain the most from Bush’s backpedaling—mining and electric power—were responsible for two-thirds of the 7.7 billion pounds of toxic chemicals spewed into the environment in 1999, thelast year for which statistics are available. That report was issued Wednesday by the EPA itself. Naturally, President Asterisk wants to cut the agency’s budget by 6 percent, a big chunk coming from enforcement.
    As dangerous to the public health as his actions appear, Bush is refreshing in a peculiar sort of way. He wasted no time showing his true colors, which was considerate of him. We’ve had plenty of presidents who didn’t give a damn about the environment but pretended otherwise.
    Not Bush. He’s proving to be a rare species himself—a politician who is exactly what his critics said he was: in this case, a stalwart and unapologetic shill for big business.
    His priority is simple and unambiguous: to fatten corporate profits at all costs.
    Nobody can say he isn’t decisive. Nobody can say he doesn’t have a well-defined policy.
    Look at the bold moves he has made in only three months:
    More toxins in the water we drink, more crud in the air we breathe, less wilderness for refuge—and fewer birds and animals to share it with.
    And to think this is only the beginning.
    June 3, 2001
    George W. Does the ’Glades Thing
    President Bush travels to Florida tomorrow on a new campaign to prove he really doesn’t hate nature.
    Buoyed by his triumphant communing with a giant sequoia tree in California, the president plans to celebrate federal efforts to restore and preserve the Everglades.
    Concerned that Bush is perceived as indifferent to environmentalconcerns, the White House carefully has crafted a Florida itinerary that will show the president as a caring, sensitive friend of the earth:
    8 A.M.
Air Force One
arrives at Miami International Airport.
    Photo opportunity: President cradles a small burrowing owl that has been digging a nest near runway Nine-Right.
    Prepared comment: “Imagine such a tiny thing living among these huge noisy jumbo jets—what better example of nature and mankind coexisting in harmony!”
    9:05. Motorcade enters Everglades National Park.
    Photo op: President pauses to admire a mangrove.
    Prepared comment: “While perhaps not as imposing as the great sequoias, this humble tree plays a unique role in nurturing marine life.
    “That’s why it is vital to continue clear-cutting our vast federal forests in Montana and Idaho, so that these precious mangroves will never be needed to meet our nation’s burgeoning timber needs.”
    10:15. Motorcade stops at a wetland.
    Photo op: President poses with the wetland.
    Prepared comment: “My administration is firmly committed to restoring the river of grass to its previous lush glory, so that it may be cherished by future generations.
    “That’s why it is imperative to move ahead with drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Preserve, thus ensuring there will always be plenty of gasoline for Americans who wish to drive to Florida and see the Everglades.”
    10:30. Motorcade stops at a slough.
    Photo op: President poses with a garfish.
    10:45. Motorcade stops by a canal.
    Photo op: President poses with a turtle.
    10:55. Motorcade stops at a cypress hammock.
    Photo op: President poses with a palmetto bug.
    Noon: Box lunch, followed by