Progress Now Action

What will Mr. Bush leave for the children when families go to our national parks?  Under the radar he is having his EPA rewrite long standing rules that will encourage coal power plants to be constructed much closer to our national parks.

Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post reporter, writes:

The new regulations, which are likely to be finalized this summer, rewrite a provision of the Clean Air Act that applies to "Class 1 areas," federal lands that currently have the highest level of protection under the law. Opponents predict the changes will worsen visibility at many of the nation's most prized tourist destinations, including Virginia's Shenandoah, Colorado's Mesa Verde and North Dakota's Theodore Roosevelt national parks...

For 30 years, regulators have measured pollution levels in the parks, over both three-hour and 24-hour increments, to capture the spikes in emissions that occur during periods of peak energy demand. The new rule would average the levels over a year so that spikes in pollution levels would not violate the law...

"It's like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven all year, I've averaged 55 miles per hour,' " said Mark Wenzler, director of the National Parks Conservation Association's clean-air programs. "It allows you to vastly underestimate the impact of these emissions."

Why is this important to the health impact on our national parks?

Yesterday, the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group, issued a report estimating that the rule would ease the way for the construction of 28 new coal-fired power plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks. In each of the next 50 years, the report concludes, the new plants would emit a total of 122 million tons of carbon dioxide, 79,000 tons of sulfur dioxide, 52,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 4,000 pounds of toxic mercury into the air over and around the Great Smoky Mountains, Zion and eight other national parks.

I would argue that the most noticeable sign is visible but there are invisible signs that would adversely impact the national parks, including higher levels of fallout of mercury and increased acidity in local water sources which will lead to higher mortality rates of wildlife and vegetation die off.

It is immoral for Mr. Bush and his cohort to only act in their own economic interest because he won't live long enough to see the harm that his policies will do to our children and grandchildren.

So fire up your phones and email and call and write your elected representatives to tell them that they must halt through legislative means this act of betrayal to our children.