Lame duck president George W Bush (remember him?) is pushing through a host of "midnight regulations" before leaving office, many of them screwing with the environment.
The Los Angeles Times says environmentalists are angry by a host of loosened safeguards:
In recent days, the Bush administration announced new rules to speed oil shale development across 2 million rocky acres in the West. It scheduled an auction for drilling rights alongside three national parks. It has also set in motion processes to finalize major changes in endangered species protection, allow more mining waste to flow into rivers and streams, and exempt factory farms from air pollution reporting.
The Chicago Tribune did a special report saying the administration undercut a clean-air rule aimed at curbing childhood lead poisoning:
...the EPA had planned to require lead monitors next to any factory emitting at least a half-ton of lead a year. But after the White House intervened, the agency raised the threshold to a ton of lead or more, according to e-mails and other documents exchanged between the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget.
Read more: Bush's last rule-making hurrah (Yahoo)
As if it wasn't already clear which pocket Bush's interests lie in, and it's not you or me and it's not the American environment, in case you were wondering.
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