The United States - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 44

into Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Voyageurs parks. The Forest Service
permitted more logging.
To head the Department of the Interior, Bush appointed Gale Norton,
an attorney who had been on the staff of the Mountain States Legal
Foundation (James Watt's organization). She believed strongly in the
rights of business and in the free market. The department staff included
former Reagan administration officials. Her chief deputy was Steven
Griles, whose career had been devoted to advancing the interests of the
coal industry, and who was a bitter enemy of the surface mining program.
On the other hand, to direct EPA, Bush appointed an environmentalist,
Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican governor of New Jersey. As a
girl she had been raised on a farm in New Jersey, and spent summers on
a ranch in Wyoming. As governor of the Garden State, she had worked
to clean up smog and prevent beach closings due to contamination. In
spite of her good intentions, Whitman made little progress at EPA. Her
attempts were blocked by the White House. Right at the beginning of the
Bush administration, she was disheartened to find that other Republicans
were blaming environmental protection for the economic recession. Vice
President Cheney's energy policy rode roughshod over the Clean Air Act.
Whitman wanted to resolve problems caused by New Source Review,
whereby old power plants faced restrictions on installing new equipment.
She believed the solution was to have a comprehensive program for both
old and new plants. Labeled the Clear Skies Initiative, it used the market
concept of trading modeled on the sulfur trading program in the 1990
Clean Air Act Amendments. President Bush lent his prestige to the plan
by announcing it personally. It met predictable criticism from environ-
mental groups, who objected that it was voluntary and would replace
the existing program ready to go into effect. With its 10-year timetable,
the pace would be slower. To Whitman's surprise, it also met criticism
from business groups who thought it still had too much regulation. After
his initial speech, Bush barely mentioned it again. Regarding global
warming, Whitman tried to be a good soldier by making the case against
the Kyoto Treaty at international meetings but received little thanks from
Republicans at home and much hostility from the Europeans. After three
years, she resigned in frustration.
The president also took time to personally announce his Healthy Forests
Initiative, supposedly a way to reduce the danger of fires. The rationale of
the plan was that because fires need fuel, the Forest Service and the Bureau
of Land Management would encourage loggers to harvest the fuel, in other