Saving the Environment

Biologists have a term for species whose habitats or gene pools are so diminished that extinction is only a matter of time: "the living dead." The Bush Administration has banished many of our most important environmental protections to this limbo. The Clean Air Act is still on the books but is not being enforced. The national forests that Teddy Roosevelt mapped out still show in green on the map, but on the ground chainsaws are converting them into clearcuts and tree farms. Superfund, bankrupt, is a shadow of itself; polluters no longer fear it. The Clean Water Act still calls for swimmable streams and fishable rivers, but its jurisdiction no longer includes the huge factory feedlots or some 60 percent of the nation's wetland habitat. What we have not lost is love for the land--the same love that runs in a powerful undercurrent throughout US history.

Here are ten steps to reverse the Bush initiatives and transform the nation.

1. Require auto makers to make cars, SUVs and light trucks that go farther on a gallon of gas. Improved technology will reduce our dependence on Middle East oil, shrink our 25 percent contribution to global warming and reduce our trade deficit, while enabling us to save money at the gas pump, clean up air pollution and reinvigorate the Big Three automakers. We should also put a tax on fuel inefficiency, which could be used to subsidize the purchase of efficient vehicles and help build new auto plants.

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