Meg Ryan Scoops Bush on Environment

[mach1]

A mission to expose Bush policy on air, water

Well-known environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., could write a book on what he views as the failings of George W. Bush's environmental policy.

Oh wait, he has written a book, and Oldsmar's Chris Piccone says the book has changed his life.

Piccone helps out at John Kerry's campaign headquarters in Tampa. Usually, he campaigns door to door or makes telephone calls. If asked to, he would empty garbage cans.

His motivation comes from Kennedy's book Crimes Against Nature , a strongly worded depiction of Bush's environmental policies.

"I looked at my daughter and said this can't happen," Piccone said. "I have to go to bed at night knowing I'm doing everything I can to help my daughter's future."

Kennedy, the son of assassinated 1968 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, is hoping his book will have the same impact throughout the United States. He appears at 5 tonight with actor Meg Ryan at the Tampa Theatre, and you can bet his comments will be a stinging rebuke of Bush.

"This is the worst environmental president we've had in American history," Kennedy said during a telephone interview Monday.

Kennedy's three children have asthma. While the rising rate of asthma among children - it's quintupled during the past 25 years - cannot be blamed specifically on pollution, Kennedy said the rate of asthma attacks is directly related to bad air coming from many of the nation's 1,100 coal-burning plants.

According to Kennedy, 70 of the worst offenders faced prosecution during the Clinton administration. Bush, however, halted the investigations after he took office.

Why? Kennedy says you don't have to look beyond the $48.3-million the energy industry gave to the Republican Party during the 2000 campaign.

"I've never heard of someone accepting money from criminals who were targeted for investigation and then ending those investigations and prosecutions after they're elected," Kennedy said. "People will mention that President Clinton pardoned (billionaire) Mark Rich, but he's just one guy. This is 70 different criminals."

Kennedy argues that Bush has tried to mask his environmental track record by adopting policies with misleading names, such as the Clear Skies Act. He also says the administration has suppressed or ignored scientific data.

But such actions, he says, can't hide the fact that high levels of mercury contamination have led the Environmental Protection Agency to declare freshwater fish unsafe to eat in 19 states, including Florida.

So much for the fishing campout with the kids.

Kennedy had his own mercury level tested by doctors who told him it was three times above normal, for reasons that are unclear. If the level of mercury in his system was in a woman's womb, that woman's newborn would likely be cognitively impaired and would possibly have permanent brain damage, he said.

If it sounds like Kennedy is trying to scare you, it's because he's alarmed about Bush and his relationship with corporate capitalists. Kennedy says the president's cronyism threatens not only the environment but also our lives and our democracy.

One big question looms. If the Bush administration is eviscerating 30 years of successful policies, how come the environment isn't a bigger campaign issue?

"If he gets re-elected, it will be because of negligence by the American media," Kennedy said. "When I talk to Republicans, they are as indignant as Democrats. Unfortunately, no one knows it's happening because of the media."

Ouch. The truth is that me and the rest of the journalistic world are more likely to attend Kennedy's talk tonight to get a glimpse of Ryan. Yet his message is more meaningful than Meg's cute smile and well-intentioned political involvement.

Somehow, we have to realize that even though birds aren't falling from a brown sky and Bonefish Grill has enough seafood to stay in business, long-term environmental issues matter because of Kennedy's kids, Piccone's daughter and all the children counting on the world being here tomorrow.

That's all I'm saying.

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Meg Ryan Will Join Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Address Bush Administration's Anti-Environmental Stance In Florida & Wisconsin Tour

Tuesday October 26, 7:08 pm ET

Kennedy and Ryan to visit Orlando, FL and Milwaukee, WI


NEW YORK, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Meg Ryan will join Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a two-city tour to discuss the Bush Administration's environmental record. Kennedy and Ryan will appear in Orlando, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 27th and 28th respectively. The tour followed a joint visit to Tampa where Kennedy and Ryan appeared at the Tampa Theater before a group of local supporters.

* October 27, 2004, 3:00 PM- The University of Central Florida, Student
Union, Key West Room #218, 4000 Central Florida Boulevard, Orlando, FL


* October 28, 2004, 7:30 PM- Marquette University, Varsity Theater, 1336
West Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI

Mr. Kennedy will address the far-reaching impacts on America's families under the current administration. "Tragically, this Administration has undermined the safeguards that protect our air and water, risking the health of families in Florida and across the country," explained Kennedy.

"As a longtime activist and a concerned mother, I am delighted to be able to help focus public attention on critical environmental issues like mercury poisoning, sewage contamination and air pollution." Ms. Ryan expressed. "Americans deserve to know about the stealth attack on our environmental laws and there is no better messenger than Bobby Kennedy," Ms. Ryan added.

Kennedy is speaking in conjunction with the publication of his book, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy.

Kennedy will detail the environmental and political implications of Bush's more than 300 rollbacks of ecological safeguards, which have for nearly 30 years protected the nation's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Key issues discussed in Crimes Against Nature include:

* Dangerously high mercury emissions putting 320,000 newborns at risk
annually;

* Superfund cleanups have declined by more than fifty percent since Bush
took office, now Bush wants the taxpayers and not the polluters to pay
the difference;

* Automobile fuel efficiency has dropped to its lowest level in two
decades due to White House policies that have encouraged Americans to
buy gas-guzzling vehicles and have discouraged auto manufacturers from
building more fuel-efficient cars.

This three-city tour is part of a 10-college campus tour that Kennedy has been conducting during September and October of this year. Sponsored by the Environmental Accountability Fund, the speeches are free and open to the public.




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Source: Environmental Accountability Fund

[Texas Carnie Roadshow]

Who the hell is Meg Ryan?
Isn't she that creepy chick flick lady?

[Renard]

Are you stalking Meg Ryan?

[Jimbo]

I can't stand Meg Ryan, she reminds me of an ex-girlfriend of mine I'd very much like to forget...

[cbychoice]

Has nothing to do with Meg,only with Environment.

Climate change 'ruining' Everest
By Richard Black
BBC environment correspondent



Campaigners demand urgent assessment of the risks to Everest
A delegation of environmental lawyers is starting a new initiative to force action on global warming.
They are arguing that governments which are members of Unesco - the UN's cultural and scientific agency - are legally bound to protect World Heritage Sites from damage.

Some sites are threatened by climate change, they say - and governments can only protect them by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

Legal dossiers concerning three World Heritage Sites will be delivered to Unesco in Paris this week.

"There's a very important mechanism in the World Heritage Convention," said Peter Roderick, director of Climate Justice, the organisation co-ordinating this action.


It's very important that Unesco says that the legal obligation of parties to the World Heritage Convention will not be complied with unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut

Peter Roderick, Climate Justice
"It entitles people to ask the World Heritage Committee to place the site in danger on this list, and thereby ensure it gets more protection," he told BBC News.

"And so we're saying to the World Heritage Committee, 'look, climate change is already affecting these priceless and irreplaceable parts of the planet'."

'Rotten' ice

This campaign involves three "priceless and irreplaceable" places: the Belize Barrier Reef, where, conservationists say, coral is dying as water warms; Huascarán National Park in Peru, and Sagarmatha National Park in the Himalayas.

In these two mountain ranges, the dossiers say, ice is melting away; even the world's highest mountain, Everest, could one day be nothing but rock.


Healthy great star coral (top) and diseased (bottom)
Mark New, a climatologist from Oxford University, UK, who works on the Himalayas, told BBC News: "We know that over the last 30 years, in the eastern Himalayas, snow cover and ice cover have decreased on average by about 30%; so there's 30% less ice and snow than there was 30 years ago."

Relatively little science has been done on the highest mountains, because they're so hostile and inaccessible.

But a documentary to be released this week, made by the independent British film-maker Richard Heap, with support from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), shows anecdotal evidence that the Himalayas are changing.

At an altitude of over 4,000m, the crew found a vast glacier lake, which according to their maps, had not been there a few decades before. There had, though, been a glacier.

They also found large tracts of ice which were, in mountaineers' terms, "rotten" - wetter, and less stable than they had been on previous expeditions decades earlier.

Carbon cuts

The Nepalese environmental group Pro Public is leading the Himalayas campaign to Unesco, and it is concerned about more than natural beauty.

Glacier lakes can overflow, sending sudden massive torrents of water down populated river beds.


The Himalayas are a climatologically very complex area - there's a lot of variability in the climate system that tends to obscure what might be a climate change signal

Mark New, Oxford University
In the long term, there are also concerns for south Asia's water users.

Himalayan ice melts into the waters of major rivers such as the Ganges, the Indus, and the Brahmaputra; as the ice disappears, so may substantial portions of south Asia's water supply.

"We are the least developed countries and we don't have many resources," said Prakash Sharma, executive director of Pro Public.

"And also, the Nepalese are not responsible for what's happening there - maybe we might be a little bit responsible, but I think [it is] the global phenomenon of climate change.

"The parties to this convention have agreed to protect the World Heritage Site because it is the unique part of the world, and we need to protect it."

After Unesco receives its three dossiers, it can if it wishes set up inquiries into what is happening in Sagarmatha, Huascaran and the Belize reef.

It can then demand action from member states, including limits on carbon dioxide.

Symbolic stick

The organisation would, though, first have to prove that what is happening is undeniably down to global climate change - which, in the Himalayas at least, might be difficult.

"At the moment it's not possible," said Mark New.

"The Himalayas are a climatologically very complex area - there's a lot of variability in the climate system that tends to obscure what might be a climate change signal."

Even if Unesco did command the big emitters to make big cuts, there is nothing in the World Heritage Convention which could force them to comply - rather like Kyoto itself, the convention is long on good intentions, but lacks a big punitive stick.

Even so, a strong judgement would have important symbolic value.

"It's very important that Unesco says that the legal obligation of parties to the World Heritage Convention will not be complied with unless greenhouse gas emissions are cut," said Peter Roderick.

"Because you have an obligation to pass these sites on to future generations; and if we cannot do it for the best parts of the planet, then - what kind of species are we?"