Science under the Bush Administration

One of the most talked about speakers at the July Democratic Republican Convention, in Boston, was Ron Reagan, son of the two-time president and beloved figure of the Republican party. Ron Reagan spoke specifically in defense of embryonic stem-cell research. His speech was touted as non-political, but here is how Reagan ended:

In a few months, we will face a choice. Yes, between two candidates and two parties, but more than that. We have a chance to take a giant stride forward for the good of all humanity. We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.

He cannot help but make these strong contrasts, for its not that the Bush Administration has systematically sidelines the opinion of scientists, in favor of positions of the religious right or powerful corporations. Another speaker at the convention to make this point extremely clear, in a short yet powerful speech at the convention, was Robert Kennedy Jr, the son of the former eponymous Attorney General, himself an environmental activist and lawyer:

In 20 years as an environmental advocate, I’ve been disciplined about being non-partisan in my approach to the environment. If you talk to the CEOs of almost any environmental organization, they’ll say that the worst thing that could happen to the environment would be if it became a partisan issue, the province of a single political party. Five years ago, if you asked experts what they thought was the gravest threat to our environment, they’d mention a whole range of issues, from over-population to global warming, to toxins in our food and air. But today, they’ll give you just one answer: It’s George W. Bush.

You simply cannot talk honestly about the environment today without speaking critically about this administration. This administration has promoted 400 major rollbacks that threaten to eviscerate 30 years of environmental progress. They’ve put polluters in charge of the very agencies that are supposed to regulate them. The second in command of the EPA is a former Monsanto lobbyist. The second in command of the Forest Service is a former timber
industry lobbyist.

This administration says that we have to choose between environmental protection on one hand and economic prosperity on the other. But that is a false choice. Good environmental policy and good economic policy are identical. If we treat this earth as a business, converting our natural resources to cash as fast as possible, we might have a few years of pollution-based prosperity. But our children would have to pay for it - pay for it with a barren landscape, poor health, and astronomical clean up costs.

Environmental injury is deficit spending – putting the cost of our generation’s prosperity on the backs of our children. This entire Administration is about deficit spending. They’ve squandered a $5 trillion surplus. And they’ve squandered the goodwill of the world.

Kennedy Jr. has a longer exposition of his views in The Nation, called The Junk Science of George Bush.

A comprenhensive critique of the Bush Administration's misuse of science in its policy making was prepared by preeminent scientists. Their report, titled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making, was released in Feb'04. The scientists charged the Bush administration with widespread and unprecedented "manipulation of the process through which science enters into its decisions." In conjunction with the statement, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released detailed documentation backing up the scientists’ charges in its report, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making. This report was recently updated. UCS also issued a sign-on statement signed by "more than than 5,000 scientists [including] 48 Nobel laureates, 62 National Medal of Science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences. A number of these scientists have served in multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican, underscoring the unprecedented nature of this administration’s practices and demonstrating that the issues of scientific integrity transcend partisan politics." Among the structural reasons invoked in the statement are:

• Highly qualified scientists have been dropped from advisory committees dealing with childhood lead poisoning, environmental and reproductive health, and drug abuse, while individuals associated with or working for industries subject to regulation have been appointed to these bodies.
• Censorship and political oversight of government scientists is not restricted to the EPA, but has also occurred at the Departments of Health and Human Services, Agriculture, and Interior, when scientific findings are in conflict with the administration’s policies or with the views of its political supporters.
• The administration is supporting revisions to the Endangered Species Act that would greatly constrain scientific input into the process of identifying endangered species and critical habitats for their protection.
• Existing scientific advisory committees to the Department of Energy on nuclear weapons, and to the State Department on arms control, have been disbanded.
• In making the invalid claim that Iraq had sought to acquire aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges, the administration disregarded the contrary assessment by experts at Livermore, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

Hand-in-hand with the structural measures are policy decisions exposing the systematic misuse, abuse, and disregard of science in policy-making, in the areas of the environment (undermining the Endagered Species Act, the Clear Skies Act, international efforts to curtail Climate Change), public health (emphasizing abstinence, rather than condom use), and defense (deciding to proceed with projects deemed inviable by scientists, such as missile defense, or 'bunker-buster' that do not generate fallout).